
Book j=*_?l ?. . 



1 



^ 



FOLLOWERS! 
OF THE trail! 



^^f 



i* 






^ BY SARAH LOWRIE ^? 



^: : l: ^ 

.'^ ^*: 

^ Church Missions Publishing Co. if 

"^ 211 State Street, Hartford, Conn. ^^ 

^ Published Quarterly ^. 



I have a bit of advice for teachers and leaders of study classes or mission 
bands who may use this book : — 

Remember these stories are part of the history of our country. They are 
not part fact or part fiction, but all fact. Use a map for every story. Make 
the boys or girls read the stories before the meeting and have them tell the tales 
at the meeting in their own words. Use the notes in fine print as additional 
sideUghts on the men and events described in the stories, but do not read them 
aloud as part of the story. Make your own class scrap-books of each of the 
Trails; railroad maps and booklets, picture postcards and current articles about 
dry farming, irrigation, the fruit crop, advertisements of Mission houses and 
Mission furniture, etc., will be found helpful. 

Parts of these stories, such as the "Lament of the Nez Percys," "The 
Burial of Father Marquette," and the "Coming to Acoma of Juan Rimirez" 
could be committed to memory by various members of your classes and recited 
with good dramatic effect. 

Four types of missionaries have been given in the four stories of the Trails : 
(1) the Pastoral type, (2) the Explorer type, (3) the Administrative type, and 
(4) the Citizen type; place the accent on these differences in your teaching. 

We all know that very httle reading outside the study class meetings is 
possible for young people. What they get in the way of information or inspira- 
tion must come in the class, I have not therefore suggested many books for 
boys and girls outside this short book of tales, nor do I bother you with a com- 
plete list of the books — some wise, some otherwise — that I have waded through 
in order to tell these tales. If, however, you read Lummis' "Spanish Pioneers, " a 
book on the early history of New Mexico, and Helen Hunt Jackson's "The Early 
Missions of California," and Parkman on "The Mission Fathers of Canada," 
and Grace King on the "French Settlers on the Lower Mississippi and New 
Orleans," and if you read Noah Brook's "First Across the Continent," and 
Parkman's "Oregon Trail," and "The Story of Marcus Whitman," by J. G- 
Craighead, you will find much that I have had to leave out. 




BY D. N. STEVWART 



The Path of the Padre 



H ^Rolm^ TRobin 

totV 

3un(or HuiUiar? 



TTTf 



Ifollowers of tbe ^rail 

THE DESERT TRAIL 

THE RIVER TRAIL 

THE MOUNTAIN TRAIL 

THE TRAIL OF THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS 



ffii? Sarab Xowrie 



publi6beO (Sluarterlg 

Cburcb nD(66ion0 IPubliebing Ca 

211 State St., IbarttorO, Conn. 






TO THE MEMBERS OF THE 
FIRST CHAPTER IN PHILADElvPHIA 
OF THE ST. PAUIv'S BROTHERHOOD 
THESE STORIES OF THE WAY 
ARE DEDICATED 



FOREWORD 

SIDE by side with the gleaming rails of the Santa Fe tracks, 
in the strange, mysterious deserts of Arizona and New 
Mexico, you may catch glimpses now and again of the half ob- 
literated road marks of the old Santa Fe Trail. 

For nearly three hundred years this path over the terrible 
and alluring wilderness has been trod by white men, but no one 
can guess for how many centuries before the Spanish explorers 
first discovered it, how many generations of Red Men, Zuni, 
Apache, and Moki, Pueblos, chff-dwellers and cave-dwellers, 
had passed that way before them. But from the first solitary 
wanderer who dared the unspeakable dangers of the en- 
chanted desert, to the last cow-puncher who loped carelessly 
through the sage-bush and over the sand dunes that half hid 
the tracks of yesterday, no one I think who ever travelled 
that trail has been an ordinary, commonplace person, such as 
one would expect to meet jogging along most roads that you and 
I are familiar with. 

From first to last, the men who have taken that old Santa 
F^ Trail, warriors, explorers, hunters, missionaries, ranchmen, 
fugitives, or even the railroad builders, have had one character- 
istic in common — they have all been adventurers. And one 
may be sure that not even the boldest, most dare-devil of them 
but had a fixed desire to gain some treasure from the heart of 
that silent and awful land — success, fame, riches, knowledge, 
safety, or perhaps only forgetfulness, that would in some meas- 
ure recompense him for the dangers of the path. 

For, in spite of its strange and unearthly beauty, death 
Itirks silent and unappeasable on every side of that trail. Be- 
hind wonderful floating mirages of refreshing lakes and shaded 



4 FOREWORD 

rivers that never have been and never will be, are veritable springs 
of water that to taste is death, and bottomless pits of quicksand 
with a sham skimming of soil; canons in which an unwary trav- 
eller may wander like a caged beast, the sheer walls rising a 
thousand feet on either side to imprison him; while more dan- 
gerous than all is the open foe of all travellers, a sun that at mid- 
day is terrific in its fierce intensity. 

And what is true of the old Santa Fe trail was once true of 
many another ancient trail, leading across rivers and mountains 
and forests into the heart of this great country. Most roads 
were once trails, and most trails were once dangerous for white 
men to follow. And those were great adventurers, famous or 
forgotten, who crossed the seas, endured hardships, suffered 
privations, and died a hundred deaths, to gain this land that 
you and I now speak of so serenely as "ours." 



THE DESERT TRAIL 

WHEN the sun of New Mexico sinks low in the western sky 
its level shafts turn the cliffs of the desert blood red. On 
either side of the trail the great mesas seem to float towards one 
like huge vermiHon islands, across a shimmering blue- veiled sea. 
They rise forbidding and terrible in that unearthly glare — sheer 
cHffs hundreds of feet high, crowned by terraced and buttressed 
fortifications, whether carved there by the winds of God, or 
built there by the hands of men, no stranger in that land can 
tell on first seeing them. 

In the year 1598, in the month of December, a Spanish 
soldier astride a gaunt horse, and followed by a stocky little 
hound, rode through this land of waste and desolation. He 
had been journeying towards the Spanish settlement of San 
Gabriel but had left the well-used trail, which follows the Rio 
Grande north out of Mexico to what is now Santa F6, and 
struck westward across the Desert towards the Sky City of the 
Quires — Acoma, as it is called to-day. This was in the year 
when PhiHp II of Spain died and left Spain and the Americas to 
his son Phihp III. It was also the year when Don Juan Onate, 
first governor of New Mexico by the grace of these two Philips, 
made treaties with the Seven Cities of Cimbola (literally, The 
Bulls, or Buffalos), and with the chiefs of the Quires at Acoma, 
and with the other Pueblo cities of the Desert. Under which 
treaties by sacred signs they made themselves subject to the 
Great King beyond the seas, this same Philip III of Spain. 

It was well for his horse that Captain Caspar Perez de Vil- 
lagran was young, and therefore of a light and wiry physique, 
otherwise the steel jacket and headpiece, the water gourd and 
the bag of rations which hung across the saddle bow, might 



6 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

have taxed the tired animaFs carrying power past endurance. 
As it was he stumbled often and made rather poor work of cross- 
ing the flinty guUies down which the trail led now and again. 
Nevertheless Gaspar urged him forward with a firm hand on the 
quirt when the going was anyway fair. 

There were two reasons why the Captain could not well 
spare his beast : first, they were passing through a very dangerous 
country, infested by prowHng bands of Apaches; second, if by 
dint of pressing on they could reach the Indian puebla of Acoma 
before nightfall, all anxiety would be at an end. For the young 
Spaniard had had news at the last friendly puebla on the Rio 
Grande that John Zaldivar, with thirty men or so, was encamped 
beneath the cliffs of the Sky City. Zaldivar was not only Maestro 
di campo to his Lordship the Governor of New Mexico, Juan 
Oiiate, but he was also companion-in-arms to Gaspar Perez, 
hence the Captain's haste to join him. 

In his impatience to be with Zaldivar he had hurried up the 
river ahead of his escort and arrived at the friendly puebla of Pua- 
ray, south of the East and West Forks, unattended except by his 
little hound. From these friendly Pueblos he learned that much 
had happened since he had left San Gabriel on his errand for 
Don Onate into Mexico. The Governor had made a visit of state 
not only to the to\\m of Puaray, but had boldly sought the 
hospitality of the proud chiefs of the Sky City itself, the guarded 
fortress town of Acoma, about which such strange stories had 
been told before even the days of Coronado. The men of 
Puaray assured Captain Perez that the Great Pale Face had 
dared to accept the invitation of the chief men of the Queres, 
had cHmbed the stone ladders of Acoma in full armor at the 
head of his Spanish escort, and had stood even on the most sacred 
place of all, the terraced roof of the Estufa (the Council 
chamber). He had moreover been graciously invited to enter 
this holy of holies of the Queres, and had as graciously refused. 



THE DESERT TRAIL 7 

Over this refusal the men of Puaray seemed to pause significantly, 
but to Caspar Perez their pause at the time meant nothing. 
They told him how on the following day Don Oiiate and his 
Spaniards had ridden westward on their beasts of terror — for 
horses were then very dragons for the fear they inspired — 
towards Zuni. Then, following him down the river from San 
Gabriel, had come that other great Pale Face with still more 
men of iron carrying thunder weapons. These too had struck 
across the Desert towards Acoma and must be even now 
encamped beneath its chffs. 

Perez recognized de Zaldivar by the description which the 
Indians gave of this second leader, and it fitted well with all 
he knew of his friend's temperament that he should have made 
the detour to Acoma on his way to join Don Onate at Zuni. For 
all the tales concerning the ancient city agreed in the tradition 
that its secret chambers were piled high with treasures of tur- 
quoise and emeralds, gold and silver. Now John Zaldivar had 
come to New Mexico for such things, and he was not one to pass 
by so ripe an opportunity as the sight of the treasure of Acoma. 
And though he himself had no particular craving for gold, or 
even for emeralds and turquoise, Gaspar Perez had felt all his 
weariness depart when he thought of the brave adventure his 
friend must even then be having beneath the mysterious cliffs 
guarding the Sky Fortress. Turning his horse westward, there- 
fore, the next day he followed Zaldivar's trail over the Desert. 

To-day that journey would be lonely enough, but three 
hundred years ago it was unspeakably lonely and very danger- 
ous. On this particular afternoon, even though Perez believed 
it to be now drawing to an end, he found to his chagrin that both 
the lonehness and the danger were beginning to tell on his nerves. 
The least suspicion of delay, or any confusion in the trail, sent a 
sudden qualm of despair over his spirits. Three times during 
the day a curious alertness on the part of his hound had keyed 



8 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

his senses to the stretching point. Yet he knew enough of In- 
dian treachery to comprehend that if he were being trailed by 
hidden foes his only safety lay in riding straight on, without 
any apparent care or watchfulness. Ride straight on he did, 
therefore, humming a tune as he rode, admiring the mirage that 
was turning the desert for the hour into a shimmering inland 
lake which ever threatened to engulf him and which ever re- 
ceded before his eyes. Last but not least he let his mind dwell 
with much enthusiasm upon the surprise he was about to give 
his dear friend, John Zaldivar. He even found leisure from his 
misgivings to compose a score or so of hues to add to his third 
canto in the great epic poem he was writing concerning his ad- 
ventures in the New World. For Gaspar Perez de Villagran 
was not only a brave soldier but a poet also, as the six little vellum 
volumes of his works prove to this day. That this cultivated 
young officer and the hard-headed Zaldivar should have hit it 
off so well was a matter of comment. However, though John 
Zaldivar was neither a scholar nor a poet and looked upon the 
world as a place to loot and then spend in, he was a good fighter, 
a square dealer with his men, and a faithful servant of his King. 
Hence more than young Captain Villagran adored him. 

When the back of a hound bristles, and his toes widen apart 
Hke a crouching cat's, and there is fear as well as menace in his 
voice, it is well to look behind as well as before one, and to the 
right and to the left. Captain Gaspar Perez rose in his stirrups 
and scanned his surroundings. Whether he saw anything to 
warrant the hound's anxiety it would have been hard to tell 
from his face. And yet it was to be observed that Villagran, 
while allowing the horse to resume his own way with a loose bridle, 
quietly and deftly loosened his padded cuirasse from the saddle 
bow and buckled it round his body. He also drew under his 
brimmed hat his steel head-piece and drew up his sword belt 
so that his short sword hung ready at his hand. He had no 



4 




^v* ^^^,^rm. 




^ 



rC 



■^ 



A Follower of the Trail 



-Ij^. 



!Y D. N. STEWART 



THE DESERT TRAIL 9 

"thunder weapons/' as the Indians called firearms. The short 
and clumsy arquebuse of that period took too long in the loading, 
and required such ceremony in the firing as to be almost more 
of a danger to its owner than a defence, especially at close quar- 
ters. Hence Perez had travelled from Mexico for all these days 
armed only by his sword, and the dagger with which he defended 
his sword arm. Although by this time he must have been con- 
vinced that he was being trailed, he had still a sanguine hope 
that he would sup that night with John Zaldivar, for the great 
bulk of Acoma loomed nearer and nearer, its summits gleaming 
like burnished copper in the afterglow of the sunset. The 
jagged hills surrounding the narrow valley which held the great 
Rock were now all that blocked his path. Not two hundred 
yards away he could see the opening to the defile leading across 
this barrier. As his horse stumbled over the first downward 
grade of the defile itself, Perez ceased his humming altogether, 
and, tightening the reins, urged the animal forward at a gallop. 
Five minutes more and the camp-fires of Zaldivar must gleam 
out of the gathering dusk, unless — . 

Just then horse and rider and hurrying hound rounded the 
last jutty of the defile, and the valley in which the mesa of Acoma 
rises lay before them. The Indians of Puaray had minutely 
described the great Rock and its surroundings to him, and Perez 
perceived at a glance that they had not hed. They had told 
him that the camping ground of the Pale Faces lay under a shelv- 
ing cliff of the mesa, facing the entrance to the valley. This, 
they warned him, was the only safe encampment because it was 
protected from an attack from the town, and commanded the 
two entrances to the valley, from the east and from the north. 
Here then John Zaldivar and his thirty men and his horses should 
be. For the shelving cliff was there, a perfect camping spot, 
the black and charred remains of camp-fires were there, and a 
rough corral constructed of loose stones, about which Perez 



10 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

could discern the hoof -marks of many horses; but neither the 
horses nor the Maestro di Campo nor his Spaniards remained. 

Plainly Acoma would afford neither Gaspar Perez, nor his 
horse, nor his hound a safe shelter that night. Yet to retrace 
his steps through the narrow defile where the crouching, threat- 
ening figures were gathering like shadows in the dusk, invited 
nothing but death. He glanced with quick eye along the north- 
ern side of the cleared space. The hound, whining and excited, 
was nosing the sand and the rocks some forty yards ahead, where 
the cup-hke rim of the valley was nicked by the opening of a 
trail scarcely wide enough for a man on foot. The trail dipped 
abruptly downwards into a seemingly bottomless gulch. Steep 
as it was, however, and narrow, someone whom the dog knew 
and would fain follow had ridden that way not many hours since. 

Perez was not one to finger with such a leading. The broken 
neck which it threatened was more than preferable to the certain 
death which was closing down upon him from behind and before. 
With a sudden lash to his horse, and a bend of his body far down 
over his saddle bow, he drove the frightened beast straight at 
the low barrier, and swung him through the broken rim of rocks 
down the shelving, crumbfing trail. He was none too soon. 
From the crevices of the rocks and the terraced roofs of the town 
came cries of execration, and the long blood-curdfing war-whoop 
of warriors keen for murder. Possibly they had counted too 
surely upon his falling into the trap of seeking his companions 
on the other side of the mesa; probably too the men who had 
trailed him were waiting some signal from the chiefs who watched 
from the ramparts, to faU upon their sofitary victim. Even 
now they must have counted upon surrounding him at the bottom 
of the narrow canon down which his horse was carrying him 
with such reckless force. But even running, leaping Indians 
were no match for that wild and frightened animal, and if neither 
Gaspar Perez nor his horse knew one yard of that terrible trail, 



THE DESERT TRAIL II 

nor could so much as guess the exit from the canon in the gathering 
dusk, the hound was hot on a scent that he knew, and Perez, 
thanking Heaven for such guidance, followed swift on his dog's lead. 

When night fell the cries of his pursuers were faint and in- 
termittent in the distance. He whistled softly to the eager hound 
and drew his horse to a standstill. It was plain that the poor 
beast would die in his tracks if he were pushed further without 
a rest. Under the starhght Perez prepared the meal of which 
all three must partake, man, dog and horse, and divided the 
contents of the gourd of water. There was just enough in the 
gourd to wash out his horse's mouth, and to wash down the 
jerked meat and the corn-meal which hound and master shared. 
Then with his weapons ready at hand, and his dog mounting 
guard at his feet, Gaspar Perez said his prayers and fell asleep. 
''It will take a miracle to protect us when the darkness is gone. 
And may Heaven grant it," was his last thought as he stretched 
his tired body on the sand. 

And, as matters stood, the danger in which he rested was 
hardly lessened, only postponed by the darkness. By dawn's 
hght the swarming Queres could easily trace his whereabouts 
by the hoof-marks on the sand. And his worn-out animal could 
scarcely endure such another flight. Nevertheless Gaspar Perez 
slept soundly hour after hour, so worn was he. And the dawn 
found him still sleeping. But the miracle had happened. The 
ground about his resting place, the low shrubs, and broken stones, 
all the trail by which he had ridden, were white and hidden un- 
der an unbroken covering of snow. 

Days later some Spaniards belonging to the escort of Don 
Onate stumbled across an apparently dying white man lying in 
the shelter of some chffs a few feet from the trail that leads past 
II Moro (The Castle) on the way to Zuni. He was not recog- 
nized by his rescuers, and he could not speak, for his black- 



12 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

ened tongue, hard and rasped, protruded from his ghastly hps 
when he tried vainly to articulate. They carried him to their 
camp, and there skillfully nursed the poor half-crazed man back 
to life. When a man is dying of thirst, dying of hunger, and 
beside himself with the long tortures of the desert, he is easily 
killed by the mere kind eagerness of his rescuers. When he 
was himself again and could talk, Perez could give no very clear 
account of the days which had followed that one of his escape 
from Acoma. While the snow still covered the trail he had been 
free from danger of pursuit, but he was likewise without a guide 
in his endeavor to follow his comrades. He rode at haphazard and 
depended for his general direction on the sun; presently his horse 
had floundered into a pit — an Indian animal trap without doubt — 
and crashing to the bottom had killed himself by breaking his 
neck. Perez, himself, had barely escaped from the pit after 
repeated efforts. What remained of the rations lay under the 
twisted body of his horse. His hound had leaped upon him in 
transports of joy as he struggled out of the death trap, but neither 
master nor dog had anything to eat that day or the next, and 
when the sun had melted the last vestiges of the snow even in 
the crevices of the rocks, they had nothing to drink. 

It was here that Perez paused in his broken tale and could 
not continue it. But the soldiers who had hstened with rough 
pity to his snatches of talk during his delirium knew what the 
sorrow was which pressed upon his heart, and one of them clos- 
ing his own big hand over Perez's fevered one, said gently: ''It 
was right that the hound should give his life for the most noble 
Sefior. And who but the noble Seiior would take a dog's hfe so 
mercifully!" 

And so they passed over in sad silence the death of the 
faithful Httle hound, whose life-blood had enabled the tortured 
man to struggle on for two days more across the cruel desert. 

The tale which his rescuers had to tell Gaspar was ghast- 



THE DESERT TRAIL I3 

lier yet and had no fortunate ending. For John Zaldivar and 
eleven of his men were dead. The Maestro di Campo and six- 
teen of his httle force of thirty had followed Onate's example 
and accepted the invitations of the Chief Men of the Quires. 
They too had mounted the steep ladders of Acoma. In an un- 
wonted moment of prudence, however, Zaldivar had left a guard 
stationed at the encampment to protect the horses. From 
what these men could learn afterwards from the three survivors 
of that fatal visit to the Sky City, the Quires had shown them- 
selves so friendly and anxious to please the Pale Faces that, once 
up in the strange and far-famed fortress city, Zaldivar and his 
followers forgot all customary precautions and allowed them- 
selves to be separated. The Commander, bent upon discover- 
ing at least the resting place of the much-talked-of treasure store, 
had accepted the Chief's invitation to enter the Estufa. Whether 
he was killed in that dark chamber, or met his death trying to 
escape to its terraced roof, no one knows, but the fall of his dead 
and mutilated body from that roof into the street was the 
signal for a general attack upon the scattered Spaniards. 

It was a dreadful and unequal combat. Yet as each grim 
fighter reeled in his last death stroke he fell on the naked bodies 
of many Indians that had paid dearly for their treachery to the 
Pale Faces. Five Spaniards attacked from three sides had been 
driven nearer and nearer the edge of the cliff, and at last seeing 
death in one form or another seemingly inevitable, they had 
gone hurtling backward over the sheer sides into the desert below. 

Yet from this terrific fall of at least one hundred and fifty 
feet, three of the Spaniards survived. The drifts of sand at 
the rock's base somehow saved their lives. For four days the 
guard, and these three who remained, rested in fear of attack 
in their encampment beneath the overhanging cliff, while the 
Quires above them celebrated their victory with wild orgies 
and terrific uproar. In the early dawn of the fifth day the Span- 



14 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

iards had stolen out of the valley, leading their horses down the 
breakneck trail, Perez had followed so soon afterwards. With 
all speed they had then pressed forward to Zuni to warn the 
Governor lest among the other Pueblo towns he enter a like trap 
and meet a like fate. 

In a few days Onate had gathered all his outlying men, and 
now that Perez was once more able to mount on horseback the 
little group of a hundred men or so set their stern faces north- 
ward in the direction of the Rio Grande. There were over thirty 
thousand Pueblos in the walled cities that they passed, who but 
waited a signal to rise and exterminate every Pale Face, — 
man, woman or child, — who came within reach. That they 
would not wait long Don Oiiate and his men knew well. It was 
only a question of days, — soon it would be only one of hours. 

The only hope of saving the Spanish colony and the women 
and children at San Gabriel was to strike first. Acoma must be 
made to pay before the eyes of all the waiting towns for her 
treachery to the Pale Faces. Yet to besiege that Rock the 
Spaniards needed the cannon and the ammunition which lay in 
the little fort at San Gabriel, as well as more firearms and more 
food and fodder. From Zuni to San Gabriel (which last is not far 
from what is now Albuquerque) even by a direct trail is not an 
easy trip. The Spaniards rode like the wind. By New Year's 
Day they had reached their fortified settlement. 

Hence it came about that on the twelth of January, 1599, 
Vicenti de Zaldivar, the brother of the murdered John, with Captain 
Perez de Villagran and some seventy soldiers, both arquebusiers 
(carriers of flintlocks) and piquiers (lancers carrying swords), 
with one small cannon of the howitzer type called a pedrero, rode 
down the Rio Grande to where the river forks, and struck across 
the desert to the great Rock of the Queres. Acoma was to be 
summoned to give up her treacherous chiefs. If her people re- 
fused, — and there was every reason to fear they would howl 



i^^^m^ 




THE DESERT TRAIL I5 

with derision at the idea, since they were three hundred war- 
riors strong, with one hundred Navajo braves at their call as 
aUies, — if they refused, there would be nothing for it but to take 
Acoma by assault, or perish in the attempt. Every man who 
knew Indians and their way of regarding mercy or long-suffer- 
ing as signs of weakness and fear, knew that unless the blow were 
swiftly given to Acoma, and successfully brought to bear upon 
the men most guilty, there could be no hope of peace with any 
of the Pueblos for at least a generation. 

The men of Acoma gave the Spaniards no uncertain welcome. 
They crowded the ramparts and hurled down jeering words of 
defiance, and stones, and whirling, flint-headed arrows. Not 
until Vincenti and his men had reached the encampment under 
the shelving rock were they free from the danger of the deadly 
hail. 

In accordance with the stately custom of Spain a herald had 
summoned the Pueblos to give up their guilty chiefs. Whether 
or no they heard him in the uproar of their own defiance it would 
be difficult to know, but as they showed small signs of hum- 
bling themselves to the messengers of the King of Spain, Vin- 
centi de Zaldivar at the head of some thirty arquebusiers led a 
sortie against the north wall of the Rock, at its lowest side. Again 
and again during that long afternoon his attack failed, and both 
men and horses suffered disastrously. Still with imperturbable 
coolness, and as it seemed unbehevable folly, he persisted until 
he had the whole strength of the garrison concentrated against 
him. Then again and again he led his men up the shppery 
ladders in what seemed an effort to take the town by sheer bra- 
vado. 

But while this brave man held the attention of all the fight- 
ing men upon himself, twelve picked soldiers under Perez were 
silently and unobserved making their dangerous way to the 
southern summit of the mesa, dragging and hauling their little 



l6 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

howitzer with them from dizzy ledge to dizzy ledge, by means of 
ropes brought for this very purpose. The southern end of the 
mesa was higher than the rest of the flat table-hke rock, and a 
cannon once dragged up its sheer sides would command the en- 
tire town. But dividing this over-hanging extremity of rock 
from the rest of the summit was a deep and unbridged abyss 
with sides so sheer as to allow of no approach to its edges from 
below. For this reason it was left to defend itself by the war- 
riors of Acoma. For in a warfare of arrows no enemy could dare 
to hold it, or daring could long survive. 

The sun was setting when the little cannon was in position, 
and its roar as it threw its first stone ball into the very center of 
the town was as welcome a signal to the Spaniards attacking 
the untakeable north wall as it was an unwelcome surprise to 
the warriors defending it. Zaldivar had now accomplished his 
purpose and could withdraw his worn-out and wounded men to 
the safe shelter of the encampment. Their business for the next 
twenty-four hours would be to guard the horses under the over- 
hanging cliff, and to rest. But for their leader there was no 
rest; it was then or never. He and de Villagran worked to carry 
the great plan into effect till the blood hterally ran down their 
fingers. Bands of men felt their perilous way along the ledges 
to the jagged rock's summit where the Httle cannon stood. Be- 
low among the clefts of the hills guarding the valley Vincenti 
guided other soldiers who cut down the dwarf trees clinging to 
the edges, and sphced them into a tree bridge. In the darkness 
of the night this too was drawn to the heights at the south end 
of the mesa, Zaldivar leading the way. The Indians watching 
from their roofs could see the little moving cluster of men grow- 
ing bigger and bigger under the starlight, but the secret of the 
tree bridge was all unguessed by them, until suddenly in the first 
red glow of dawn the giant tree was Hfted by a dozen eager hands 
and hurled into position across the chasm. No sooner was it 



THE DESERT TRAIL I7 

in place than a dozen Spaniards, one by one in rapid succession, 
had rushed across its swaying length to guard its further end 
from attack, while their leader Zaldivar raUied his men to follow 
and take the unguarded south end of the town by quick assault. 

It was in this brief pause that the terrible mishap occurred 
which no one could have forseen. The soldier nearest the bridge, 
who was guarding its edge on the Acoma side, took hold of the 
rope attached to it and gave it a tug in order to shift the butt 
of the tree into firmer position on the rock's edge. He either 
pulled too hard, or the bridge was not securely enough fastened 
to the other side, for it shpped from the ledge and hung suspended 
over the yawning chasm. The soldier was so panic-struck by 
what he had done, and so confused by orders shouted to him from 
a dozen throats, that before any one could prevent him he had 
dragged the swaying tree clear over to his side of the precipice 
and thrown it some distance from the edge. The watchful 
Indians, quicker to see the result of this mistake than the Span- 
iards, flung themselves upon the twelve men on their side of 
the Rock and in a moment the little guard was fighting for ex- 
istance. 

The catastrophe had fallen so suddenly, and the loss of that 
single, slender bridge had so frustrated all his hope of attack, 
that Zaldivar stood white and stricken with horror. He could 
not even order the men about him to fire upon the struggling 
mass swaying nearer and nearer to the edge of the cliff. The 
twelve Spaniards and the clinging savages would have gone 
down together, from a charge of musketry. Without the bridge, 
too, the position of so large a majority of his entire fighting 
force on the slender foot-hold of the jagged peak was dangerous 
to the point of ruin. 

He glanced backward for a moment in his rage and despair, 
half-minded to order a retreat, when his eyes suddenly caught 
the face of Caspar Perez, and something in the dawning purpose 



l8 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

in that face made him pause. ''Only a miracle can save them!" 
he groaned. ''Yes, only a miracle!'' came the voice of Perez 
through the cries and execrations of the helpless men about him. 
And as the words left his mouth Gaspar Perez unbuckled his 
cuirass and loosened the thongs binding his heavier clothes. 
In a minute he was free of encumbrances and nearly as light as 
God had made him. Flinging his sheathed sword at the feet 
of his bewildered men he suddenly flashed a smile of affection 
and farewell to them. "Pray for the miracle," he cried, and 
sprang through the groaning crowd, pushing them one and 
another from his path with a heavy hand. At the top of the 
sHght dechvity leading down to the chasm's edge he held back for 
the breath of a second measuring the gaping abyss from brim 
to brim. Then with a rush he bounded down the rocks, held 
himself poised for the leap, took it with the impetuosity of a 
pursued stag, — and cleared the gulf. 

Friend and foe were alike paralyzed. No one moved either 
to deter or to help him. But Perez never paused. Dragging 
the bridge to the edge of the chff, he hfted it endwise and flung 
it across. A dozen men sprang to catch the branches as the tree 
descended and in another moment it was secure. This time no 
one waited for a command, but each as he could reach the first 
foot-hold of the bridge hastened across its perilous length. The 
Indians gave way before such an onslaught and fled to their pro- 
tected houses. 

For two days and two nights the storming of Acoma lasted. 
The little cannon did vahant work. One great adobe house after 
another — some of sixty to seventy rooms in extent — crumbled 
before its well-placed shots, smothering countless women and 
children beneath their ruins. For the Queres refused summons 
after summons to capitulate. Not until their own braves and 
their Navajo allies were dead and their city a smoking ruin, did 








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THE DESERT TRAIL I9 

they yield. Then the old men of the city — all that were left 
of its defenders — condescended to sue for peace. 

Vincenti de Zaldivar granted it immediately, thankful to 
be through with the bloody business. His men were most of 
them wounded, some desperately. Many of them carried the 
scars of that fight to their dying day, but not one of the chiefs 
who had taken part in the murder of the Spanish soldiers of 
John Zaldivar's band hved to pay his reckoning to the Spanish 
Governor. Most of the guilty leaders had perished in the two 
days' fight; those who had survived flung themselves over the 
cliff before the capitulation. 

Thus did Acoma and her people pay dearly for breaking 
faith with the Pale Faces. The other towns of the Southwest, 
the Seven Cities of Cimbola, and the Moki Confederacy, took 
the lesson to heart and concluded to keep the solemn promises 
they had made to those who had power to punish even the 
City of the Sky. 

What remains of this tale is soon told. 

The years passed, — ten, twenty, twenty-five. Don Juan 
Onate had long ceased to be Governor of Spain's possessions 
in the North. But the colony begun by him at San Gabriel 
and then transferred to Sante Fe, spread and multipHed. In 
the Indian cities along the Rio Grande, from El Paso to Santa 
Fe, as well as the towns of Cimbola, and from Zuni to the Moki 
pueblos, Spanish missionaries had settled and taught the Indians 
how to live in peace with their neighbors and pray to the Great 
Father. 

Before the Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth Rock there 
were eleven churches built in the towns of the Southwest 
by the Indians under the guidance of their friends and 
teachers the missionaries. Some of those churches are used to- 
day by the descendants of those same Pueblos, and they are Httle 
altered by the changes and chances of three hundred years. 



20 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

Yet there are some people who say that the West has no history. 

With Don Onate's departure from the North many of the 
brave followers of the trail who had been his friends departed 
also. Vincenti de Zaldivar and the poet soldier, Gaspar de Vil- 
lagran, went their ways in search of other adventures. Twenty- 
five years later few remained. 

The sights and sounds of those three days' struggle at Acoma 
had left scars on the hearts of those who survived the fight as 
well as scars on the bodies. Concentrated hate and sullen fear 
of the Pale Faces had bitten deep into the memories of the Quires 
of the Rock. No white man since that day dared venture near 
the valley unless he were protected by Spanish soldiers, and no 
Mission Brother had found the courage or the faith to approach 
the fatal, ill-omened town. 

Therefore in the year 1629, when it was known throughout 
the length and breadth of Santa F6 that the gentle monk Fray 
Juan Ramirez had volunteered for the dangerous mission, and 
had refused a military escort from the Governor, or even so much 
as an Indian muleteer from the Superior of his convent, but had 
set forth on foot down the long Trail to Acoma, alone and with 
only his crucifix for protection, — those who knew him gave him 
up for dead. 

After many, many days, beset by dangers before and be- 
hind, but believing all things, hoping all things, and therefore 
enduring all things with a serene heart, Juan Ramirez, the Mis- 
sion Brother, entered the rocky defile which had proved the 
Gateway of Death to so many of his race. 

His coming was not unheralded. As with Gaspar de Villa- 
gran so many years before, scouts had trailed him for many and 
many a mile. And now they and the guards of the Rock were 
waiting to destroy him. His whole journey had been one long 
prayer, so that at its end when death faced him he did not pause 
to pray. The miracle which must save his life, so that he could 



THE DESERT TRAIL 21 

do God's will in Acoma, must come from Heaven. His duty 
was to go forward to meet it. 

Without hurry, — though the flint-head arrows were falling 
in all directions about him, one piercing his worn robe, — he 
crossed the entrance to the valley and approached the stone 
ladder cut into the shelving cliff. With a cry of rage the people 
above pressed to the heights overlooking that side of the Rock 
and aimed their missiles at the quiet gray figure. Then for a 
moment by a turn of the steps he was hid from their sight. 

Straining to get the first view of him when he should emerge 
on the next platform the crowd howled derision and hate, heap- 
ing the stones at their feet ready for the last deadly onslaught. 
Even the women and children had left their houses and pressed 
near the perilous edge to see the Pale Face hurled to his destruc- 
tion. One of these children, a little girl, too young to compre- 
hend what the cries and struggling meant, grew suddenly alarmed 
by the black looks on the faces about her. She had pushed nearly 
to the brink of the precipice and, backing suddenly to free herself, 
stepped off the edge. 

A terrible cry rose from those nearest the spot, and the 
whole mass of human beings swayed backward in horror. Her 
little body had rolled down the shelving rock, over and over, 
and in an instant was lost to sight. There were jagged rocks 
nearly four hundred feet below waiting to receive her. 

Climbing steadily upward the monk heard the shout and 
recognized the note of horror in the cries. Then suddenly he 
beheld a little brown bundle of whirling arms and legs drop 
over the cliff above his head and fall with a little thud on a ledge 
of rock, heaped with drifting sand, that jutted out some four 
feet or so over the next drop of hundreds of feet. Before the 
little girl could even catch her breath to cry, Juan had her in 
his arms and was comforting her. She was hardly scratched, 
and nestled into the hollow of his shoulder quite soothed and 



22 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

unafraid. Lost in wonder over the miracle of her escape, he 
mounted upward talking to her as he went. It was thus the 
people of Acoma saw him as he chmbed the last steep steps and 
stood before them at the gate-way of the town. 

To them, as to him, it was a miracle. And they received 
him as a messenger sent from the Great Ones. He lived among 
them for twenty years, teaching them the love of God. The 
children learned to read and to write and to say their catechism 
at his knees; he was their physician and ministered to the sick 
with many simple arts learned from the monks in his boyhood. 
To the men and women of the town he was a father. With 
enormous labor they built a church where the blood of the Pale 
Faces had once stained their streets. It was dedicated to God, 
the Holy Cathohc Church and to the good Saint Joseph. And 
San Jose it is called to this day. 

When Father Juan Ramirez died, in the year 1664, his peo- 
ple of Acoma were the most civilized and the gentlest and the 
most Christian of all the Pueblos of the Southwest. To-day the 
six hundred Queres of that old, old town still gather upon their 
terraced roofs and hold quietly aloof from the white men who 
pass that way from time to time. But they are a gentle people, 
industrious and peaceable. 

In their ancient church hangs a crumbling picture of San 
Jose, given them centuries ago by a king of Spain. 

Except for this token of an allegiance that their forefathers 
learned with such bloodshed to comprehend, they must have 
long forgotten Spain and her conquest, but of Juan Ramirez, 
who conquered them by great love, there remains a faint though 
beautiful memory. And the stone steps by which he first entered 
Acoma are still called by them 'The Path of the Father." 



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THE DESERT TRAIL 23 



NOTES ON THE DESERT TRAIL 

In the wildernesses of the Southwest of our country, the wilderness 
called The Painted Desert, the Mojave Desert, and The Colorado, there 
are wonders as exciting as the wonders in the heart of Africa, and more thril- 
ling than even Sinbad met on his voyages; petrified forests; giant cafions; 
acres of scattered agates; deserted cities on all but inaccessible mesas; caves 
beneath whose rock floors subterranean rivers chafe and fret their dark 
channels; towering prehistoric houses of stone, empty and beast-haunted 
now, but with their hundreds and hundreds of chambers unchanged since 
their owners left them, centuries before Columbus and his followers were 
born; rivers of fire that have blackened into rock, and extinct volcanoes in 
whose hollow shells forgotten tribes of red men have lived and died. And 
more interesting even than these past wonders are the histories of the ancient 
Indian pueblos, that are as thriving and full of life to-day as they were when 
the Desert Adventurers first beheld them. In these strange walled towns 
the Indians still live their busy, peaceful lives, in the same terraced houses 
that their forefathers used when they watched from their ladder stairways 
the coming of the Spaniards across the desert three hundred years ago. 
Their own forefathers, unknown centuries before that, had watched the 

marauding bauds of savages, looking out from even more lofty pcroLoo. 

For in the ancient days they had been wont to build their houses where 
eagles build nests, on the edges of sheer cliffs, and to climb home from the 
day's farming where even a mountain sheep could scarcely find a footing. 

The great Southwest of our Country is also a land of knightly adven- 
tures. In the days of the Field of the Cloth of Gold brave men in armour 
were riding across this land in search of cities of gold. The adventures of 
the monk Marcos de Niza, and of Cabeza de Vaca, and the coming of 
Coronada were all before the year 1545. Sometimes, too, we forget those other 
heroes of that Desert country, the missionaries. Nearly every great stone 
church of the fifty that they built before 1676 in our land had at least one 
martjT, for those were cruel days, and the Indians learned the lesson of gen- 
tleness slowly and with many lapses. But that they did learn it, the 10,000 
Pueblos dwelling peaceably in their ancient towns in this Twentieth Century 
prove. 

If you read the books of Charles Lummis, who is an authority upon the 
history and lives of these extraordinary people, for he lived a neighbor to the 



24 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

Hopis for many a year in the little Pueblo of Isleta, not far from the Rio 
Grande, you will get a better picture in your mind's eye of what the Desert 
Adventurers found when they passed that way than I can give, who only 
saw — and passed by. 

In two books which are worth reading : The Spanish Pioneers, and. Some 
Strange Corners of Our Country (Lummis), I found the story of Acoma, 
Other books that are worth while are: My Adventures in Zuni (Cushing), 
Arizona and New Mexico (Bancroft) . 



THE RIVER TRAIL 

LA PORTAGE, as they call it in the Canada woods, — the carry, 
as it is translated across the border in the Adirondacks, — 
is the narrow strip of forest land and rapids that divide one lake 
of a chain from another. For in a day's journey one may paddle 
a canoe through a dozen of these lonely waterways of the wilder- 
ness, as smoothly and as silently as things move in dreams, but 
at the end of each lake is la portage, across which one must help 
to carry the canoe. 

France has left scores of names such as this to stand guard for 
generations over her lost possessions in America: T.ouisiana, New 
Orleans, Duluth, St. Louis, Detroit, Vincennes, Dubuque, St. Paul, 
Marquette, Joliet and many more. It is with the last two names 
that this tale has to do. 

When Louis de Baud, Count de Frontenac, was Governor of 
Canada, he desired above all things to find favor with that most 
exacting, yet rewarding of masters, Louis XIV of France. He and 
Talon, the French Intendent, gravely planned together in the 
governor's fortress at Quebec how they might make the streets of 
Paris, and above all the corridors of Versailles, ring with the fame 
of New France, and of her Governor, and her Intendent. Finally 
they hit upon an idea. Not by any means a new one, but still it had 
never lost its glamor, and there was always the possibility that 
sooner or later the man who pursued it would reach his heart's 
desire. 

Since the days of Columbus, and before, men had set out to 
find a short-cut across the world to India; a waterway, by which 
the king who controlled it might monopolize the trade of the 
world. Spain had hunted in vain for the great inland sea. The 



26 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

trails of her adventurers only led through deserts and across great 
mountain ranges to the Pacific. 

Of late England also had been on the hunt; her sailors had 
scoured the coasts for a great river crossing the land from East to 
West. They had found many great harbors, and some rivers, but 
no waterway to the distant Pacific nearer than that round the Horn. 

To the Count de Frontenac and to Talon the chances that 
France would prove the lucky hunter seemed twenty to one. 
Already a great waterway, the St. Lawrence River, led into five 
gigantic lakes which stretched unnumbered leagues into the West. 
These great Lakes were all known to be navigable. The hunters 
and trappers and fur merchants, and above all the missionaries, 
who had sailed to the utmost limits of the inland seas, all brought 
back the same tale — of a mighty river, the Father of All Waters, 
the Mississippi, as the awe-struck Indians called it, which was said 
to spring from the centre of the earth and flow in great yellow 
floods to the farther seas. 

No white man had yet seen the river, though La Salle had 
found some of its tributaries and guessed its nearness. It never 
occurred to him, or to any one else, that it could lead anywhere 
except to the Pacific. Here then was the opportunity for the 
glory, both for France and for themselves, that Frontenac and 
Talon desired so eagerly. 

But for various reasons they did not choose the already famous 
adventurer. La Salle, to carry out their ambitions, but hit upon a 
lesser, and at the same time a richer man than Sieur de La Salle, — 
one Louis Joliet. 

Joliet was a fur merchant of some note. Before becoming a 
merchant he had been a trader with the Indians. He knew them, 
and he knew the land and water between Montreal and Green 
Bay, better than most Frenchmen. But before he had been 
either a trader or a merchant he had been a Jesuit, and was still 
connected with the Order. 



THE RIVER TRAIL 27 

Immediately upon accepting the appointment of the Governor 
to head the expedition to the unknown west he sought out the 
Superior of the Canada missionaries to ask his advice. According 
to the economical ways of that century, the explorers always bore 
the expenses of their arduous journeys, whilst the lands they 
discovered and a good deal of the glory, went to the king. Since 
Joliet had the honor of being chosen to make the great discovery, 
it was he who was expected to pay the price. 

He wished to travel as lightly as possible therefore, and what 
he asked of his Superior was advice concerning a guide and inter- 
preter. The others of the party would be Indians to paddle the 
canoes. This interpreter would be his sole white companion. 

It would be a long and dangerous journey, involving fearful 
risks from hostile Indians along unknown ways. Joliet felt that 
the choice of companion might mean life or death for him. But 
the Superior did not hesitate a moment, "Your man", said he 
''is Pere Jacques Marquette. And you will find him at his new 
mission on the Lake of the Hurons at Mackilmacinac." But 
Joliet being a cautious man wished more definite information con- 
cerning this priest Marquette, and you may be sure that he got 
it, for the Jesuit Order was a great Order in those days, and knew 
its men. 

These, or something like them, were the facts concerning 
Pere Marquette which the heads of the Canada Mission gave to 
Louis Johet: Jacques Marquette was born in the town of Laon 
in the North country of France in 1637. As his family was as 
ancient in origin as the town itself, it was necessary for one of the 
sons to marry, in order to carry on the name and estate, but, 
having brothers to perform that duty, it was possible for Jacques 
Marquette to become a priest in the Order of the Jesuits. He had 
joined the great Jesuit Mission at Quebec in the year 1668, and had 
been sent directly to the most westerly mission settlement among 
the Hurons at Point St. Esprit on Lake Superior. That journey 



28 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

of itself was a lesson in wood craft and in Indian craft. The 
long days in the canoes, with only Indians about him; the noon 
and night rests in the forest; the wild game, the rapids, the Indian 
lore, the very dangers themselves, all taught him lessons not to be 
learned elsewhere. 

Once settled at Point St. Esprit he began his second course 
of schooling. He learned to talk not only the language of his 
special flock, the Hurons, but also the tongues of the Ottawas, 
the Sioux, Pottawattames, Foxes, Menomonies (Rice Eaters) and 
of the Illinois, who all came to those shores, some from great 
distances, to trade their furs for fish. While he learned he taught, 
and being a single-hearted man, very direct, very gentle and 
entirely fearless, he soon gained a great hold over his people. 

The Illinois interested him more than any of the others, they 
were more ready to accept Christianity than the Hurons or the 
Ottawas, and they were more civilized. They had come too from a 
greater distance and told Marquette many strange things about the 
countries and tribes through which they had passed, and they 
spoke always of the mighty River. It was a dream of his that 
some day he should journey back with them and plant a mission 
on its banks. 

Suddenly they ceased to return year by year to fish in the 
lakes. It was to poor, eager Marquette as though the River had 
swallowed them up. Two years passed and they did not come. 
It was at this time, too, that owing to a shifting of the Hurons 
from Lake Superior to Lake Huron, Marquette was directed by 
his Superior to follow them, and it was at Pointe St. Ignace, across 
the narrows at Machihmacinac, that one day late in the year 1671, 
Louis Joliet found the busy missionary overseeing the completion 
of his new mission. 

When the fur trader showed the priest his appointment from 
the Superior to accompany the dangerous expedition into the 
unknown west in search of the Great River, Marquette was 



THE RIVER TRAIL 29 

speechless with joy. His great dream was to be fulfilled. He 
asked nothing better of Heaven than to carry the Faith into that 
undiscovered country. For the next two months, while he was 
instructing the missioner who was to succeed him, he completed 
the building at Pointe St. Ignace. Then with a care-free mind he 
set himself to prepare for the journey. He chose five Indians from 
among his Hurons upon whom he could rely, and set others to 
making two birch canoes. Under their supervision the boats were 
fitted out with stores of corn and jerked meat, and the few other 
bare necessities for a long trip. Meanwhile he and Joliet made a 
map of the country which they hoped to penetrate, the details of 
which were based upon the reports of Indians and upon the hear- 
say of white traders and the woodsmen who had skirted the region 
on their hunting trips. A curious map it must have been. Any 
child could draw a better one to-day, no doubt. 

It was on the seventeenth of May, 1672, that Joliet and P^re 
Marquette and their Indian servants set out from Pointe St. Ignace 
on Lake Huron, and guided their canoes due south into Lake 
Michigan. Their course there lay along the north end of the lake 
to the village of the Rice-Eating Indians, the Menomonies. Mar- 
quette was welcomed with great celebrations by his friends of 
that tribe; but when they heard what he had left Pointe St. Ignace 
to seek in the wilderness, they did everything in their power to 
detain him. For they regarded the expedition as certain death for 
the seven men. They assured the two Pale-faces that, not only 
were the inhabitants of the shores of the Great River ferocious and 
implacable toward all strangers, but the river itself contained fright- 
ful monsters which would overwhelm their frail canoes, and devour 
them. They told of a certain whirlpool in the great flood where a 
demon lurked, who bellowed night and day; and of an abyss into 
which the river disappeared, and swallowed up all who ventured 
near , with cries of wrath and pain. Lastly, they warned Marquette 



30 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

that, should he escape all these terrors, the sun would destroy him 
with the levelled spears of his deadly heat. Marquette, in return 
for all this friendly zeal, taught his friends, the Menomonies, a 
prayer against all evil, seen and unseen; and, explaining somewhat 
of the mystery of Jesus Christ, bade them a serene farewell, and 
with his six companions resumed the journey southward to the 
Lake, known now as Winnebago. 

After adventures, some of a happy, some of a dangerous kind, 
they reached the southern end of Green Bay, and on the seventh 
of June entered the chief town of the Miami tribe, a place that 
has figured much in the travellers' tales of these days because of 
its civilized appearance, and because of the superiority of its in- 
habitants and their king. Marquette was enraptured to find a 
cross set up in the midst of the town. The Miamis venerated it as 
the Great Manitou of the French, and they had hung deerskins, 
red girdles and war weapons on its outstretched arms. Like St. 
Paul at Athens, the eager Father used this as a text to tell his 
Hsteners the story of the "Unknown God" whom they thus ignor- 
antly worshipped; and, hke the Athenians, the Indians Hstened 
with but half attention. The '^new thing" which was diverting 
their thought was the daring of the Pale-faces in venturing into 
the dreadful boundaries of the Great River. 

The Miami chief prevailed upon the travellers to accept the 
services of two of his men as guides through the long, canal-like 
waters at the end of Fox River; and well for them that he did, 
for the lagoons twisted in and out of the meadows of wild rice in a 
way to confuse any canoer who had not got the clue to the right 
channel by long practice. There was a mile and a half only of 
portage between these headwaters of Lake Michigan and the head- 
waters of the Wisconsin River, yet one flowed into the Gulf of 
St. Lawrence and the other into the Gulf of Mexico. Thus, on 
the tenth day of June, the Frenchmen launched their little canoes 
on the stream that knows no rest for over a thousand miles. 




Marquette on the Mississippi 



THE RIVER TRAIL 3 I 

Day after day they glided down a peaceful river, passing 
lovely islands and broad prairies, and forests festooned with wild 
grape. Night after night they drew their canoes upon some pro- 
tected shore, lit their campfires, ate their pleasant meals of fresh 
trout or venison, and slept peacefully under the stars. So far 
there was no sign of danger from man or Nature; but on the 
seventeenth of June the alert ears of the Indians who paddled 
caught the roar of rapids to the south, and presently their httle 
boats were tossing like leaves on the wild and tumbling waters of 
the Mississippi, where it clove the stream of the Wisconsin almost 
at right angles, and swept that stream and the seven brave men 
floating on its bosom in a strong embrace into the Unknown. 

From that hour the travellers advanced with a sharp lookout 
on either shore for enemies, and for dangers ahead. They slept in 
their canoes at night, anchoring them out of arrow-shot of the 
banks; and they divided the night into watches, during which one 
waked while the others slept. On the twenty-fifth of June they 
made out a well-worn trail along the right bank, and, after a con- 
sultation, decided to risk following it. The Indians remained with 
the canoes, and Marquette and Johet struck inland over the 
prairie, along the path. After six miles or so they came to a large 
village, which, to Marquette's great happiness, proved to belong 
to his one-time friends, the Illinois. 

The coming of the Pale-faces and their daring made a great 
impression on the Illinois, and the chief and his braves outdid 
themselves to show them honor. Marquette and his companion 
had to endure feasts that were tests of courage as well as of the 
stomach. But they did not fail in the test, and so gained upon 
the good-will of the chief of all the Illinois, to whom they were led 
in triumph, that he presented them with a "Peace Calumet," a 
pipe decorated with feathers, the peculiar emblem of good-will 
recognized by the Illinois and their aUies throughout the land. 
Carrying this and some supplies of food for the journey, the two 



32 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

companions returned to their waiting canoes, escorted by some 
six hundred of their late hosts. 

Embarking amidst solemn farewells, the slow progress of the two 
boats down the great river was continued. They passed the mouth 
of the Illinois that La Salle had so nearly reached a year or so before 
and came one day abreast of the terrible demon about which the 
Menomonies had warned them. It was a great rock, painted to 
look like two hideous men monsters, ending in scaly and fishlike 
tails. So repulsively large and gruesome did these figures appear 
brooding over the river that the men at the paddles and the men 
at the stern of the canoes forgot to look to the steering, and failed 
to pay heed to the roar of the rapids below them; consequently the 
boats were nearly capsized in the welter of waters made by the 
junction of the turbulent and swollen stream of the Ilhnois River 
with the Mississippi. 

Escaping this danger, they made quicker progress now that 
the stronger current of the two great rivers carried them on their 
way. They passed the forest slopes where St. Louis now is, and, 
a few days further south, the mouth of the Ohio. Gradually the 
heat of the sun grew more and more oppressive, and the foliage 
and vegetation more tropical and dense. 

Suddenly, one stifling noon, when the two Frenchmen had 
relaxed their vigilant outlook, and rested, spent and exhausted, 
in the meagre shade of one of the narrow sail sheets, they came sud- 
denly abreast of a group of Indians on the right bank of the river. 
Before, however, the frightened men at the paddles could back 
water, or the amazed men on the shore could reach for their 
weapons, Marquette had drawn from his tunic the Peace Calumet, 
and was holding it up so that all could recognize its purport. To 
his joy and to Joliet's relief, the sign was immediately recognized, 
and the Frenchmen were invited with hospitable signs to disembark 
and test the good-will of the allies of the Ilhnois. 

As before, they were feasted and overwhelmed with atten- 




c 



THE RIVER TRAIL 33 

tions. They noted with grave misgivings, however, that their 
hosts carried firearms, and powder in glass bottles of European 
make. The Indians were vague as to what far-off power had sup- 
plied these possessions, and were ignorant how far the river upon 
whose banks they had always dwelt flowed, before reaching its 
outlet. They assured the travellers, however, that ten days more 
must bring them to the Great Sea, which, alas! was far enough 
from the truth. 

An uneasy sense that they were nearing the Gulf of Mexico 
and not the Vermilion Sea, as they called the Gulf of California, 
may have swept over Joliet's mind at this time, but he still hoped 
against hope that the stream would bend to the west and take 
them within reach of the Pacific. So with a light heart he launched 
his canoes into the gigantic stream from which he hoped so much, 
and once more the seven travellers pursued their dangerous way. 

Day followed day, and marsh-land and forest followed each 
other in dreary monotony. The sun was sickening in its terrific 
strength, and the nights unrestful from the clouds of insects hover- 
ing over the river. They had travelled hundreds of miles without 
seeing a human being, when suddenly, as they passed below the 
mouth of the Arkansas River, the banks seemed alive with Indians. 

This time there was no hesitation on the part of the inhabi- 
tants, nor indeed on Marquette's, who lifted his peace symbol 
high above his head, but without effect. The Indians launched 
their canoes and beset the boats of the strangers like a swarm of 
angry bees. Had not their gutteral and savage cries brought 
the elders of the village to the shore Joliet and his companions 
would have reached their journey's end then and there. For- 
tunately, on beholding the Peace Calumet, the elders controlled 
the more fiery of the braves until a council could be called. 

The two Pale-faces were motioned to bring their canoes to 
land, and were conducted amidst sullen silence to the lodge of 
the chief. Here they were forced to listen to an endless pow-wow 



34 



FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 



in an unknown tongue, while one brave after another spoke his 
mind on the advisabihty of kilhng them. Their fate quite evi- 
dently hung on a thread. One movement, one glance of the eye, 
might have snapped it, until suddenly a man who could speak a 
little of the Ilhnois entered the circle. 

To him Father Marquette addressed himself, explaining the 
peacefulness of their errand, and the might and power of the God 
who protected them. His words on being repeated to the listen- 
ing Indians in their own tongue immediately appeased their anger 
and the crowd of sullen gaolers became the Pale-faces' friends and 
eager hosts, as if by magic. 

From the festivities at that village the travellers journeyed 
down the river to a second encampment, where a deputation of 
welcoming hosts met them on the banks, and escorted them with 
shouts of encouragement to the chief. Here, as before, Marquette 
preached the Faith, with the help of another interpreter, who also 
understood a httle Illinois; and, as before, the braves listened with 
grave and respectful attention. 

JoHet, after taking council with the old men of the tribe, 
was forced to conclude that the river was still far from its outlet — 
it was, as a matter of fact, full seven hundred miles from the Gulf 
— and to acknowledge even to himself that there was no longer a 
possibihty of that outlet's being on the Pacific slope. On the con- 
trary, he felt convinced against his desires, from what the Arkansas 
Indians now told him, that its destination must be the Gulf of 
Mexico. He learned, moreover, that the Indians to the south 
of this last Arkansas village had no treaty with the Illinois or with 
their allies, and would neither respect the ' 'Peace Calumet" nor 
spare the lives of the Pale-faces. 

This last, with the fact that their lives were threatened by 
some unruly members of the tribe which was at present harboring 
them, and the conviction that they had gained the information 
which they had been sent to seek, made Joliet decide to return to 



THE RIVER TRAIL 35 

civilization rather than risk the loss of all which the journey had 
gained for France by venturing further. Escaping as quietly as 
they could from their somewhat dangerous hosts, they drove their 
canoes out into mid-stream, and facing north began their home- 
ward voyage. 

They started on the seventeenth of July, and in a heat that 
was prostrating began to paddle back over the thousand miles 
they had floated down the great river. It was a difficult task at 
best to make headway day after day against the rapid current, 
but the difficulty was augmented by a scourge of dysentery which 
attacked them all and which brought Father Marquette to the 
point of death. His companions ministered to him with anxious 
care, for by his knowledge and quick understanding of Indian 
speech and Indian character he had saved their lives more than 
once in the past adventure and much endeared himself to them. 

At length, by sheer dogged determination, they gained the 
mouth of the Illinois and, leaving the Mississippi, turned into its 
calmer waters. The coolness of the forests and the plentiful 
supply of fresh meat saved the day for the sick man, so that, when 
they reached a large village belonging to the Illinois not far from 
Lake Michigan, he was strong enough to preach to them, as he 
had to so many of their tribe on that eventful journey, and to 
give them his blessing. 

The young chief was so won by the good man that he offered 
to guide the seven strangers by a short way known only to his tribe 
to the lake. They gratefully accepted his services, and arrived 
at Green Bay, near the mouth of Lake Michigan, the last of 
September. Marquette was too weak to venture further with 
winter coming on, but Johet pushed forward down the Lakes to 
Quebec. They had been gone four months and had paddled their 
canoes over 2,500 miles. 

Poor Johet! As he neared his destination, with high hopes of 
praise from Frontenac, he had the ill-luck to lose control of his 



36 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

canoe just above Montreal in the rapids of La Chine. The boat 
capsized, and two of its occupants were drowned, Joliet himself 
barely escaping, and all his papers and maps were destroyed. 
In a letter to Frontenac he said: 

'*I had escaped every peril from the Indians; I had passed 
forty-two rapids and was on the point of disembarking, full of j oy 
at the success of so long and difficult an enterprise, when, after all 
danger seemed over, my canoe capsized. . . Nothing now 
remains to me but my life, and the ardent desire to employ it on 
any service which you may please to direct." 

He died poor, nevertheless, and the credit for the discovery 
of the Mississippi has somehow been given more to La Salle than 
to him. Perhaps this is due to the fact that La Salle, a few years 
later, voyaged down its entire length and died in heroic effort to 
found the city which was later to become New Orleans, near its 
mouth. Ours is a rich country, and millions upon millions of 
fortunate citizens five upon its great resources, but to know the 
story of its past is to realize with something like awe how many 
men became poor to make us rich ; how many men died that we 
might live. 

As for Father Marquette, if you have a mind to follow him 
when he set out the next year to settle among the Illinois and build 
them a Mission, you would do well to read that book of great ad- 
ventures, 'Ta Salle and His Discovery of the Great West," by 
Francis Parkman. 

I remember that when I read there the story of Pere Jacques 
Marquette's burial at St. Ignace after all his happy labors were 
ended it reminded me somehow of Campbell's great poem on the 
Burial of Sir John Moore. 

"In the winter of 1676 a party of Ottawas were hunting on 
Lake Michigan; and when, in the following spring, they prepared 
to return home, they bethought them, in accordance with an 
Indian custom, of taking with them the bones of Marquette, who 



THE RIVER TRAIL 37 

had been their instructor at the Mission St. Esprit. They re- 
paired to the spot, found the grave, opened it, washed and dried 
the bones and placed them carefully in a box of birch-bark. Then, 
in a procession of thirty canoes, they bore it, singing their funeral 
songs, to St. Ignace of Michilimackinac. As they approached, 
priests, Indians and traders all thronged the shore. The relics 
of Marquette were received with solemn ceremony and buried 
beneath the floor of the chapel of the Mission." 

Happy, glorious Marquette! Few of the kings of the world 
have had such a burial. 



38 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 



NOTES ON THE RIVER TRAIL 

They were wonderful men, those first French explorersof the New World, 
and among them was none greater than the first, Samuel de Champlain. 

Let us picture him sailing up the long reaches of the River St. Lawrence 
and coming out on that first evening of his discovery on the long shining 
levels of the vast Lake — Caniaderiguarunta — (the gate of the Country) as the 
Indians named it. 

"Vl'Tiat an awe-inspiring and terrible wilderness those shores were three 
hundred years ago! What a spirit the men had who, in their frail canoes, 
traversed the rivers and lakes, with no guides except Indians, and no hope of 
succor from friends left far behind! For when Champlain glided over the 
waters of the lake that was to bear his name, there were no Europeans nearer 
than Virginia, where the English had made their little settlement two years 
before. And it was later, in the same year, 1609, that Henry Hudson made his 
great discovery." 

Far to the South the Spaniards were exploring the Great Desert, and years 
before this De Soto had perished on the banks of the river whose greatness 
even he had not guessed. It was left to the brave Frenchman, La Salle, to 
complete the task begun by De Soto and left incomplete by Joliet. But it is 
to the Frenchmen who followed La Salle, the men who founded New Orleans, 
St. Louis, Detroit and all the French towns from the Great Lakes to the Gulf 
that we owe the heaviest debt. Many of them were simple Mission Fathers, — 
"Black Robes" as the Indians called them, — like Pere Marquette. They not 
only made existence possible on the Great Lakes by their settlements, and 
their patient explorations and their maps, but like Marquette they acted as 
interpreters, and as go-betweens and peacemakers for the Indian tribes of 
what are now the states of Minnesota and Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Missouri 
Illinois, and Mississippi. They and the "coureurs de bois," about whom 
Francis Parkman has written such wonderful stories, began that great tri- 
umphal march of civilization from North to South through the very heart of 
our land. 

Their Missions along the Great Lakes were the scenes of many martyr- 
doms. That hero, Pere Brebeuf, had met his terrible death years before 
Marquette had come to the New World, and those first wonderful missions 
had been burned, and the converts massacred by the merciless Iroquois. 
The tribes themselves, which had once lived in such friendliness with the 



NOTES ON THE RIVER TRAIL 39 

Pale-faces, had scattered to other and safer hunting grounds. Thus it was that 
the new mission Fathers who came to take the places of their murdered brethren 
had to begin the work all over again, and in many cases with new tribes and 
in new places. But before, and for many years after the massacre, the 
Missions were the great centres of life for all that region now known as the 
head waters of the Mississippi. 

A Jesuit mission of the lakes was generally a fortified and palisaded en- 
closure containing besides a log chapel and the low-roofed dwellings for the 
Fathers and their servants, a workshop, a storehouse for trading purposes, and 
a garden. Outside the stockade there were tilled fields and grazing lands. 
The Fathers had two sorts of converts who worked for them — the so-called 
"donnes," or given men, or, as we should call them, the lay brothers, and the 
hired servants, ''engages," who were generally the hunters, guides and 
canoe-men of the settlement. The missions were also centres for the fur trade; 
knives, tools, cloth and trinkets, and later on in the century wampum (shell 
beads from the coast of New England) was bartered for valuable mink, otter, 
beaver, sable and fox skins. Each mission had not only to be self-supporting, 
but, in addition, it had to support any new ventures or explorations made by the 
Order in the name of the French Government. And you must always bear in 
mind that the great expeditions that were undertaken to enlarge the boundaries 
of New France in that century were made at the risk and at the expense of 
the explorers. The French kings graciously appointed them and gracefully 
accepted the results of their labors. 

Thus it came about that even though Father Marquette and his Hurons 
were hard at work on the new mission at Pointe St. Ignace when the Govern- 
ment officials at Quebec appointed a Frenchman rich enough, as well as daring 
enough, to lead an exploring party in search of the Great River, the fame and 
mystery of which roused every one's imagination, the Jesuit Order did not 
hesitate to bid their most useful missionary accompany him. For, as you 
probably know, the Society of Jesus was at that time an even greater organi- 
zation than it is to-day. In France it not only controlled the schools of the 
kingdom, but it was also the most enthusiastic missionary society then in ex- 
istence in the world. Its priests were the best educated and the most devoted 
to their business in the Roman Church. When young Jacques Marquette 
became a priest, this devotion of the Jesuit missionaries to the Faith and the 
simphcity and force of their lives were such as the world had not seen for 
many a weary century. 

It was because the ardent men who were enrolled in its membership 
sought first the Kingdom of Heaven, that it was trusted the world over, and 



40 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

it was because it was first of all a Missionary Society that it gained the hearts 
of kings. When its members forgot their allegiance to the King of kings, and 
its priests were found in palaces, and its missions no longer marked the out- 
posts of the world, but its missioners were found supporting tottering thrones 
and debatable monarchies — it was then that the meaning of the word Jesuit 
changed from a heroic thing to one of craft and cunning. The thing might 
happen again to any of our religious societies. Our own Church could grow 
so powerful with the rich that it might cease to be the poor man's friend. It 
could so struggle for this world's success that its priests would fail to fiiid 
martyrdoms. 



THE MOUNTAIN TRAIL 

IF you or I should desire something fervently enough to work 
for it day and night for forty years, the chances are that 
in the end we might possess it, even though it should happen 
to be the great African Diamond, or the year's winner of the 
English Derby. 

About two centuries ago, in the Island of Majorca, there 
were four boys — Serra, Crespi, Palou and Verger — who, from 
reading old tales about adventures in the Americas, were pos- 
sessed with a fever of ambition to cross the seas, and to plant 
the Cross of the Blessed Jesus in that great mountain land to 
the northwest of Mexico which Viscayno had seen from his ships 
a century before, and on whose shores Coronada had unfurled 
the banner of Spain, claiming the continent for God and his 
king. 

It is true that neither the boys nor the old tales of adventure 
were very clear as to what sort of a land it was that bordered 
the Pacific above the last Mexican-Spanish settlements in Lower 
California. Beyond the fact that the mountains were high and 
rugged, hke their own Sierras of Spain, and the valleys between 
them were part desert, part fertile grazing lands where Indians 
wandered, Viscayno and the men who came after him were not 
over explicit. But it was enough for the boys to know that 
Viscayno and his crew, with some monks of the Carmelite order, 
had entered a beautiful harbor — now Monterey — and landing on a 
flowery shore had celebrated Mass one bright morning in the year 
1602, and that they had at the same time announced with a cheer- 
ful faith that the spot thus hallowed would be the first of many, in 
the king's new dominions, to resound to songs of happy Christians. 

On their walks and in their labor about the convent school 



42 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

of San Bernardino, to which they had been sent to become Francis- 
can Brothers, the boys talked with eager enthusiasm about these 
hopes. Young Serra, who was the most fiery and imaginative of 
the four friends, was full of dreams of the churches that they 
would build with their own hands, as the great St. Francis had 
done before them; and of the Indians they would gather into 
them, and baptize and teach, to the glory of God. Crespi, who 
longed for adventures, lay awake at night, enduring with un- 
bounded delight imaginary perils across unknown mountains 
and through valleys hostile with savage Indians. I dare say that 
the other two friends, Palou and Verger, had their share in these 
youthful plans of adventure, but into what particular paths their 
fancies led them the real tale of their wonderful lives does not tell. 
Verger, who was certainly the most methodical of the friends, 
may have delighted himself by planning what provisions and seeds 
and utensils. Church vestments and books, they would have to 
carry with them, with which to furnish their churches, and build 
their monasteries, and plant their gardens, and teach their schools. 

Be that as it may, while the four friends of the Monastery 
of San Bernardino were indulging in their boyish dreams within 
its dim old cloisters, there was nothing in the world outside to 
bid them hope that their ambitions could ever be fulfilled. The 
Spanish king showed no zeal in the support of adventurers on 
exploring expeditions to the Pacific slopes. Spain had lost more 
than she had gained thus far from her adventurers; and if the 
Church had been inaugurating a mission to the unknown lands 
northwest of her Mexican domains, she would have put the 
Jesuits, who were already in possession of Lower California, at 
the head of any new venture. 

Last and most fatal barrier of all, the Franciscan authori- 
ties of the Monastery of San Bernardino were not given to am- 
bitious dreams of missionary conquest. Hence the request of 
the four young Brothers, Serra, Crespi, Palou and Verger, that 



THE MOUNTAIN TRAIL 43 

they be allowed to cross the seas, and carry the Gospel to the 
Indians of the mountain lands on the other side of the world, 
was received with scant favor and finally dismissed as impossible 
by the Superior of the Order. 

But perhaps you have observed that it is the '^impossible" 
which happens to some men — men who refuse to give up hope, 
who never know when they are beaten. 

Before he had reached his eighteenth year young Serra be- 
came a monk. He took the name of Junipero — pronounced 
''Oonipairo" in the Spanish — from that amusing, simple-hearted 
follower of St. Francis, whom the great Italian so delighted in 
that once, you r^jnember, he exclaimed: ''Would that I had a 
whole forest of such Junipers!" 

It seems that the second Junipero was well named, for he 
was the most cheerful and serene of companions. When the 
Superior of the monastery turned a deaf ear, year after year, 
to the prayers of Serra and his fellow monks for freedom to go 
on their perilous journey, he and his friends showed neither 
anxiety nor chagrin. Some day their summons would come! 
Some day the Almighty, Himself would intervene on their be- 
half. Meanwhile, obedient to the words of the Blessed Jesus, 
it behooved them to watch and pray! 

Five years passed away, and yet another five; still no sum- 
mons! The routine of the monastery, the prayers, the service, 
and the study, and the labor, went on, month after month, year 
after year, in the ancient cells. From the world outside came 
faint echoes of wars and conspiracies. Kings were crowned and 
Popes died; colonies were founded and abandoned; a score of 
years passed away, and still Junipero and his three friends waited 
and hoped. 

Then suddenly, as though a thunder bolt had dropped from 
a blue sky, came the call! A great missionary expedition had 
been inaugurated by the Church of Rome to depart for Mexico. 



44 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

The convent of San Bernardino in the Island of Majorca was 
required to send two of its monks to join the other Brothers of 
the Order at Cadiz, from whence the missionaries were to sail 
for the New World. Junipero and Palou were chosen and de- 
parted, Crespi and Verger waving them a farewell from the con- 
vent gates with wistful, glorified faces. At Cadiz, Junipero 
found that there were still two vacant places. He and Palou 
lost no time in applying for them for Crespi and Verger. Word 
was hurried to Majorca, and, joy of joys the four friends were 
reunited in time to sail in the same vessel! 

But the time of waiting was not over. In Mexico the four 
Franciscans of Majorca were sent to the College of San Fernando. 
Here they labored among the Spanish and Indians and the Half 
Breeds, teaching, preaching, and Uving with them, for nearly 
another score of years. The Jesuit missions still blocked the 
way to the long-desired goal of Upper California. They neither 
went in to possess the land themselves, nor permitted others to 
go. To any but extraordinarily brave men this last long de- 
tention on the very threshold of their desires would have turned 
hope into desperation; but what you must always remember 
first about Junipero and his companions is just this — they were 
extraordinarily brave men. 

Serra was an old man when the Great Summons came, old 
at the age of fifty-six, and crippled with the hardships and labors 
he had driven his frail body to endure for the last twenty years, 
in a climate where no European worked who valued his fife; but 
he stood ready to answer the call with a heaven of exaltation 
in his heart. 

The great Jesuit power had come to a sudden end in Spain, 
in the year 1767. Within a twelvemonth the Order had been 
expelled from all the Spanish possessions of Mexico, and the 
Franciscan friars had been put in charge of the missions in Lower 
California, and commanded to carry the Gospel of the Blessed 



THE MOUNTAIN TRAIL 45 

Jesus to the Indians of the mountains and sea lands to the north. 
The ' 'impossible" had happened! 

Yet, when the word was brought to Father Junipero Serra 
that he had been appointed Superior to the sixteen Franciscans 
who were to form the new Mission, he was so surprised at the 
honor that, as the old record puts it, "He was unable to speak a 
single word for sudden tears." 

Of the four friends, Verger only was to remain behind. He 
cheerfully took upon himself the work of his other three compan- 
ions at San Fernando, leaving them free to depart upon the mis- 
sion so long dear to all their hearts. Thus in a very beautiful 
and practical sense he helped their dream of the conquest of 
Cahfornia to come true. 

The Spanish Government had now suddenly become very 
keen about the mission, and Don Joseppi de Galvez, Inspector 
General for His Majesty's provinces, was instructed to send 
soldiers and Mexican Indians, as well as Spanish settlers, to 
colonize the new country. De Galvez was a most practical 
and far-seeing organizer, and he gladly provided the Franciscan 
Brothers with seed with which to start the gardens about the 
new monasteries, as well as w4th grain for the farm lands they 
planned to cultivate. He also ordered that cattle and sheep 
should follow the expedition, in ships from Southern California 
to San Diego; while with his own hands he packed altar furniture 
and vestments for the chapels which Father Junipero would 
build in the distant wilderness. 

It was decided to send the expedition in two parties. The 
ships were instructed to meet those who were to journey by land 
at the harbor which Viscayno had discovered in the year 1602 
at the lowest extremity of the unexplored country. 

Don Joseppi also pointed out to Father Junipero that Vis- 
cayno had found a second harbor many leagues to the north of 
San Diego, the Bay of Monterey. Here it was proposed that 



46 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

the Franciscans should plant a second Mission, while half way 
between the two he designated a spot for the third monastery, 
asking that the Fathers should name it Buena Ventura. 

Father Junipero most cheerfully assented to all this good 
advice, only adding that there must be no long delay in estab- 
hshing yet a fourth Mission, which for love's sake he would name 
for the great founder of the Order, St. Francis. The Command- 
ant agreed that assuredly this must be done; but as to the site 
of the Saint's nameplace he did not presume to dictate. 

*'If St. Francis desires a Mission," he said gravely, '4et him 
but show the port, and we will put one there for him!" 

As both De Galvez, and Portala the captain of the soldiers 
who were to protect the missionaries, were in grave doubt if 
Father Junipero's strength would hold out on the long and dan- 
gerous journey before them, they urged the Padre to go by the 
easier way of the ships; but Junipero Serra laughed at their 
qualms on his behalf. He told them that he would rather die 
on the trail than miss one step of the glorious journey to the land 
of his high hopes. And even when, as a last resort, they begged 
that he would allow himself to be carried on a litter across the 
rugged defiles of the mountain canons, he told them with shin- 
ing eyes that they need have no anxiety for his safety. God 
would not let him perish until he had fulfilled his task. 

And so, upon Thursday in Holy Week in the year 1769, 
the Mission Fathers, with Portala and his soldiers and escort, 
started on their long journey. It is a wonderful story. Father 
Crespi kept the records and he had a very artless way of mixing 
up pious reflections, bits of wayside gossip, miraculous happen- 
ings, and tragic mis-adventures in the same simple recital. He 
relates how one day, when an old injury to Father Junipero's 
leg became insupportable from the heat and dust and steepness 
of the trail, a sudden happy thought came to the plucky travel- 
ler. Beckoning to one of the muleteers he said: 



THE MOUNTAIN TRAIL 47 

**Son, do you know a remedy for a sore leg?" 

'^Eh, Father!" cried the man, "what remedy can I know? 
I only cure beasts." 

''Well, then, my son, regard me as but one of your beasts, 
and my sore leg, a sore back. In short, give me the same treat- 
ment you would give to your beasts." 

It took some further urging on the Padre's part to screw 
the muleteer up to performing the cure, for, in commom with all 
the party, he regarded Father Junipero as a saint already. Finally, 
however, he consented. 

"I will do it. Padre, if it pleases you," he said with a solemn face. 

In true muleteer fashion he mixed some herbs in a solution 
of hot tallow, and made a poultice for the inflamed limb. It 
worked as well on the saint as he had been used to see it work 
upon his beasts. That night the swelling went down, and the 
Frate slept more soundly than he had for many a week. Next 
day he was able to kneel at prayer as he read the Service and 
to continue the journey. To the end of his days he was lame 
and in constant pain, and to the end of his days he bore both 
lameness and pain as though they did not exist for him. 

It took fifty days for the scouts of the California Mission 
to reach the Bay of San Diego; there was no trail and they did 
not know the mountain passes. Often in trying to keep within 
sight of the ocean they found no footing on the steep western 
slopes of the mountains, yet much of the interior of the land was 
a grim desert, "rich only in thorns and stones," as Father Crispi 
wrote down in his journal. The Indians, whom they had brought 
for guides, deserted, fearing the tribes of the north; and desert- 
ing, carried off most of the provisions. Yet on June 16th the 
entire expedition had reached San Diego. Below in the bay 
the ships rode at anchor, and under a canopy of green boughs 
servants, sailors and monks knelt while Father Junipero cele- 
brated the Holy Communion. 



48 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

After that day of rest the good Father set about building 
his first mission church, and Brother Crispi set off to find the 
harbor of Monterey. He hunted for it for six months, poor 
eager man, but neither he nor his followers set eyes on it. 
However, persevering northward in search of it, they found "sl far 
greater harbor" which they named San Francisco, remember- 
ing the words of Don Joseppi de Galvez. 

When at last they returned to San Diego with the news of their 
failure and their success, they found their captain, Portala, so 
discouraged with his six months experience of the barrenness 
and unfriendhness of California that he had given orders for 
the expedition to return home. The expected ships with new 
supphes had not come from Mexico, the men were dying of scurvy, 
and the meagre rations on hand would hardly support them 
back to civihzation. March 20th was the date fixed for depart- 
ure, and Father Junipero was given to understand quietly and 
kindly, but very plainly, that his dream of missions in California 
must be put away forever. 

''Now is the time for a miracle!" said he to his brother monks. 
He had implored the commander to postpone his departure yet 
a week or two more in the hope of the long-delayed ships, but 
at last he reahzed that he was powerless to change Portala's 
fixed purpose. 

''It rests with God alone," he said quietly. "Let us fast, and 
then pray for a miracle." 

And pray and fast he and Crispi and Palou did all that day 
and all that night. 

On the morning of the 20th at the celebration of the early 
communion, they, and many with them, saw suddenly on the 
far horizon of the sea a great ship with all her sails set. There 
she was for a moment like a great winged angel — and the next 
she was gone. Some thought she was a phantom ship bearing 
such an one as the Flying Dutchman, others thought her a sign 




rHE Miraculous Ship 



THE MOUNTAIN TRAIL 49 

from Heaven. Portala was one of these last, and waited. Four 
days later the good ship San Antonio entered the Bay weighted 
with provisions from bow to stern and the Mission to California 
was saved. 

Soon after this joyful event Portala and Junipero and many 
others set out once more to find Monterey, the ships following 
them up the coast. This time they found the harbor without 
delay, and on the first day of June the happy monks and soldiers 
and sailors sang the Te Deum on the green bluffs overlooking 
those beautiful waters. 

To-day if you look above the road which passes between the 
beach and the Presidio grounds of the town of Monterey, you 
will see a stone figure of a kneeling Franciscan, the flowers and 
field grasses blowing all about the little enclosure which protects 
the spot. Those w^ho know, say that it is a good likeness of the 
happy missionary who knelt on that green knoll in the year 1770, 
thanking God for the long journey, safely ended. 

''Only grant me the years to build Thy Missions," cried he. 
''I am poor and weak and growing old, but give me yet a few more 
years in which to serve Thee." 

He looked so frail and transparent that few believed his 
passionate desire would be fulfilled. Yet God gave him more 
than fourteen years. Lame, and frail as he was, he tramped 
back to Mexico after a year or two to get more money from the 
Viceroy, who dared not refuse him face to face. He built nine 
great Missions. Their names are the names of the beautiful towns 
of California, and he and Crispi and Palou and their followers 
planted the olive orchards and the vineyards and the fruit and 
the rose gardens. They made, too, the great trail across the 
mountains from San Diego to San Francisco, as safe and beautiful 
as a garden path. 

Always when he was starting a new Mission Junipero was 
most triumphant. 



50 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

*'As soon as a place favorable for one had been reached, the 
Padre would order a halt, and extracting his bells from the panier 
of the pack mule, tie them to a nearby tree and fall to ringing 
them with all his might." 

"Hear, hear, ye Gentiles! Come to the Holy Church! Come 
to the Faith of Jesus Christ!" he would cry. 

Perhaps not an Indian would be in sight. ''Never mind!" 
he once said, ''Let me unburden my heart! It is full with de- 
sire that all the world might hear the bells and that every Gen- 
tile of these mountains may come!" 

And they did come; first a few to stare and wonder; then 
more who asked questions; then more and more until there were 
hundreds. Father Junipero baptized over one thousand of his 
people with his own hands. 

He saw nine great Missions built before his death. In all 
over a score of them were estabhshed within the next twenty- 
five years. In them twenty thousand Indians lived and learned, 
prayed and worked. 

And so he journeyed to and fro, over his mountain trail 
through all weathers for fourteen years. Father Crespi, "the 
joyous," as he was called, was his constant companion. The 
last journey the two friends ever took together was just before 
Father Crespi's death, when they set out to the hills above the 
Bay of San Francisco, where Brother Palou was laboring. 

Father Junipero's death was quite as beautiful as his fife had 
been, and far, far easier. He was at the San Carlos Mission not far 
from Monterey, resting from a long journey up the coast from San 
Diego, and Father Palou was with him. The year was 1784. 
Everyone seemed to have guessed that he was dying, yet every day 
he read the service and ministered to the people. The evening be- 
fore he died, when he had made his last Communion, the church 
was crowded with weeping Spaniards and Mexicans and his own 



THE MOUNTAIN TRAIL 5 I 

Indian converts, for the news had spread, and the people from 
other Missions had come to say farewell. 

There was a sound of weeping all through the dim church 
and finally those who sang the hymn, "Tantum Ergo," failed 
one by one until Father Junipero's voice sang on almost alone, 
' 'strong and high" the old record says. 

Next day he walked to the kitchens and asked for a little 
broth; and seeing how pleased the Brothers looked at his taking 
it, let them lead him back to his cell, where Father Palou took 
him in charge. 

''I feel better now," he said as he lay down on his pallet. 
And then, smiling at them, he added with a sigh of content: 

"I will rest." 

And so ended his long day's work! 



52 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 



NOTES ON TPiE MOUNTAIN TRAIL 

It was the plan of the Cahfornia missionaries not only to convert the 
Indians, but to civilize them. Every Mission had its church building and its 
services and catechism classes; and, also within those great cloistered enclos- 
ures, there were graneries and winepresses, dairies, vegetable and flower gar- 
dens, orchards, and sheep-folds. Opening out of the long stone corridors of the 
mission building were rooms where women were taught to weave and to spin, 
to dress skins and to fashion clothes, and where their children were taught to 
read and write. These Missions according to Junipero's eager planning were 
put an easy day's journey apart and thus afforded safe shelters for travellers 
the length of that wonderful coast, as well as great Church schools for teach- 
ing the art of living to the Indians. 

You may imagine with such dreams coming true, what a rapture of hope 
fulfilled Junipero put into the Te Deum that day in June, one hundred 
and forty years ago as he knelt on the slopes of the Monterey. But you can- 
not well imagine, because you have never seen the like of it in your day, — 
unluckily for you, — how the news of that hymn of praise sung on the hillside 
of Monterey set Mexico to ringing her church bells for joy, and was carried 
over the sea to Spain, where it spread like wildfire from province to province, 
the peasants and their lords joining in thanksgiving. A new glory had been 
added to Spain, a new people to God! 

And when you see the Missions which Father Junipero built in those ten 
years, you will reahze how splendidly Spain and her Viceroy helped the little 
monk. The churches and monasteries, the acqueducts and walls, the store- 
houses and cloisters, that were built under the direction of the Mission Fathers, 
have given a name to a certain very noble, spacious style of architecture, so 
that nowadays, when you see a particularly strong, low building of cement and 
stone, whose lines and curves are simple and good, and whose interior fittings 
seem cut and hewn to endure for generations, you are more than likely to be 
told that the plans have been drawn in the Mission style, and after the designs 
the Mission Fathers made for their Indian converts a century ago. 

And when you read the books of Helen Hunt Jackson — ''California 
Missions," and "Ramona," you will comprehend what the missions once 
were to California. 

Before fifty years had passed the successors of Crespi and Palou and 
Junipero owned twenty convents in California, and were very rich and very 




Ruins of San Juan Mission, 1716. 



NOTES ON THE MOUNTAIN TRAIL 53 

powerful. They owned the richest farming and grazing lands of the country, 
and their cattle and sheep and live stock numbered thousands and thousands. 
Whole communities of Indians lived within their walled enclosures, working 
for them in return for food, clothing and protection — a kind of serfdom. 

But the Mission Fathers of that generation were no longer missionaries 
in thought or act. They were indolent and dull, fond of power and of ease. 
They no longer fought sin and ignorance and their own evil passions, but 
they fought the Mexican government, which quite naturally coveted their 
rich lands and their many possessions. 

As the years went by and Spain lost her American provinces, and Mexi- 
can governors supplanted the old proud Spanish rule in Cahfornia, the great 
pillage of the Missions began in good earnest; lands, cattle, graneries, orchards, 
— everything went. The Indians were driven out and perished in a single 
generation, the monasteries were broken up and dismantled. 

Then came the American war with Mexico! And California became ours 
in 1848 by the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidlago. It was at this time, too, and 
by this treaty, that New Mexico and its desert trails became possessions of 
the United States. Texas had freed herself and was annexed in 1848. 

The United States government found terrible confusion and poverty 
left by the Mexicans in California, and just then in 1848-49, began the great 
gold stampede. The Indians and the Spaniards, and after them the Mexi- 
cans had found gold in California, but the Americans turned the mountain 
country into a vast mining camp ! Great fortunes were made in a week, and 
lost in a night in the gambling dives which infested the camps. For a time 
no one thought of any thing but gold in California, and no restless boy or man 
in all the country thought of anything but California. 

Those were not good days, and in the years while the surface gold lasted 
the mining cities of the Pacific slopes were evil, unlovely places, where men 
were desperate, and women were bad, and few children were innocent. Then 
gradually the easily-got gold failed and the mining camps were deserted. Men 
in desperation turned to the long-neglected gardens and orchards of the 
Mission Fathers. The old irrigating sluices were mended, the wells and 
cisterns restored — then California came into her own.! 

Our fathers called Cahfornia the Golden State because of its shining 
metals; w^e of this generation call it the Golden State still, but we think of 
golden oranges, and long glistening rows of lemon trees. 

To-day in that land of gardens, there are people who point to a few 
beautiful but rather empty Mission churches, and to a great monastery at 
Santa Barbara, and to a score of quite ruined buildings and cloisters, with 



54 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

here and there a bowed old Indian clinging to the shelter of their broken 
walls. ''These," say they, "are all that remain of Father Junipero Serra and 
his wonderful dream for California! The Missions pillaged and ruined by 
the Mexican and Spanish and American Governments; the Franciscan monks 
debased, and driven out by persecution; the Indians despoiled and scattered!" 
They quite forget, when they look at the ruins, that, though the schools and 
churches and the very bells which Father Junipero hung with his own hands 
are silent and broken, his dream for California is still coming true. Coming 
true, O wonderful thought, because it was his dream! 

For the great gardens and orchards, the great orange-groves and vine- 
yards of California are Father Junipero's gifts. He first made these deserts 
blossom as the rose. And the flowers are his gift; and the bells that swing 
under beautiful archways, and the long, low houses with the curving gables 
are his gifts; and the great Indian schools that the Government and the 
Churches have modelled after his Mission schools, are his gifts. And the 
wrongs that after slow years have been righted because of the undimmed 
power of his enthusiasm, are his gifts. His trail across the mountains is still 
beautiful from San Diego to San Francisco. 



THE TRAIL OF THE 
HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS 

IN the early thirties of the last century the town of St. Louis was 
the meeting-ground of many races. The French Canadians 
and the Spanish and Mexicans, the Yankees, the Southern plant- 
ers, and the pure French from New Orleans, passed and re-passed 
one another in the streets, and made their trades in the markets 
and the warehouses, and along the busy wharves. 

Men in homespun and men in raccoon skins, Mexicans in 
embroidered jackets and Frenchmen with their hair en cue 
and with ruffled linen, sat side by side on the banquettes sipping 
their cooling drinks without exciting even a glance from the idlers 
on the streets; but when one day there stalked into the town a 
company of four silent Indians in full ceremonial dress, demand- 
ing to see the Governor, the crowd gathered from all directions, 
and men stood on their chairs at the cafes to see them pass. Not 
that Indians were strange sights in St. Louis; the nearby country 
swarmed with them; but these Indians were of a different sort 
from those in the Mississippi Valley, and their dress and orna- 
ments were strange. It was rumored that they had come from 
beyond the Rocky Mountains and had traveled more than three 
thousand miles. Two of them were old men. 

Now it happened that General Clark, the United States 
Government Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the North- 
west, was then in St. Louis, and to him these Indians were led. 
They told him that they were of the tribe of the Nez Percys, 
far, far to the North, and upon questioning them he learned that 
they had come from the banks of the Columbia River. They 
said that they had been sent by their tribe to the Land of the 
Rising Sun, where men worshipped the All-Powerful One, to get 



56 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

from the Pale Faces their great Book which told of the Way to 
the Happy Hunting Grounds beyond the Great Divide. 

General Clark received them with grave ceremony, he saw 
to it that they were properly housed and clothed and fed, he 
showed them the sights of the town, the theatre, the cathedral, 
the markets and the wharves, and he persuaded them to post- 
pone their return until a boat which belonged to the American 
Fur Company could take them up the river as far as the mouth 
of the Yellowstone. But while they waited the two elder men 
died. 

When the time came for the other two to' depart, the Gen- 
eral sent them presents from the Government to carry back to 
their people, and received them in great state when they made 
their visit of ceremony to bid him farewell. A young man who 
was one of General Clark's escort was so interested in the two 
grave, sad men that he wrote down the farewell speech which 
the older made on behalf of both of them, and later sent it to a 
friend in the East. 

Farewell of the Nez Perces Chief 

'^I came to you over a Trail of many moons from the 
setting sun. You were the friend of my fathers who have 
all gone the long way. I came with one eye partially opened, 
for more light for my people who sit in darkness. I go 
back with both eyes closed. How can I go back to my 
blind people? I made my way to you with strong arms, 
through many enemies and strange lands, that I might carry 
back much to them. I go back with both arms broken and 
empty. The two fathers who came with me — the braves 
of many winters and wars — we leave asleep here by the great 
water. They were tired in many moons and their moccasins 
wore out. My people sent me to get the white man's Book 
of Heaven. You took me to where you allow your women 



THE TRAIL OF THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS 57 

to dance as we do ours, and the Book was not there. You 
took me where they worship the Great Spirit with candles, 
and the Book was not there. You showed me the images 
of good spirits and pictures of the good land beyond, but 
the Book was not among them. I am going back the long 
trail to my people. You make my feet heavy with the bur- 
den of gifts, and my moccasins will grow old carrying them, 
but the Book is not among them. When I tell my poor 
blind people in the big council that I did not bring the Book, 
no word will be spoken by our old men or our young braves. 
One by one they will rise up and go out in silence. My 
people will die in darkness and go forth to the Hunting 
Grounds. No white man will go with them, and no white 
man's Book to make the way plain. I have no more words." 

When the letter bearing this beautiful and sad lament 
reached the East the man who read it sent it to a noted Western 
explorer named Cathn. ''Can this be true?" he wrote. Catlin 
wrote immediately to General Clark asking him for the facts. 
General Clark confirmed the report of the speech. ''It is true/' 
he said. "The sole object of their visit was to get the Bible." 

He explained to some one else the hopelessness of giving 
them the Book they asked for; no one of their tribe was able to 
read or to interpret it. The Government had more than it could 
well accomphsh, just then, to keep peace among the fierce and 
restless tribes of the West. Fort Leavenworth was at that time 
the last outpost of mihtary authority west of the Mississippi. 
Beyond was lawlessness, except where here and there over 
the Northwest were the scattered forts belonging to the English 
of the Hudson Bay Fur Company. 

The life of the Indians before the coming of the Pale Faces 
must never be thought of as a peaceful, beneficent Hfe. One 
tribe preyed upon another, the strongest stole from the weaker. 



58 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

treaties were made only to be broken, sometimes treacherously 
at the next good opportunity, friendliness changed to hate with- 
out warning. At his best the Indian was a good, imaginative 
child, at his worst he was a mad dog. 

Perhaps the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the North- 
west judged shrewdly enough also that the Way to the Happy 
Hunting Grounds so desired by the Nez Perces was not the steep 
and flinty path of self-denial towards which the Book pointed, 
but an easy, magic road to be gained by spells and incantations, 
that led to some earthly Garden of Eden, visible to the eyes of 
mortal men. Perhaps he guessed from his experience of Indian 
laziness and Indian ignorance that when the realities of the Book 
were taught to them, few of the braves would condescend to the 
hard path of gentleness and forgiveness and unselfishness and 
steadfastness. At all events the Nez Perces returned to their 
people without the Book, and the spring turned into summer 
and summer into winter with no sign from the Pale Faces that 
any one cared one way or the other for their strange appeal. 

But though they were quite ignorant of it, the name of the 
Nez Perces was on the lips of many men and women that year, 
and their request for the Book lay heavy on many hearts. In- 
deed, the call pressed so vitally on some hearts that in all six men 
laid down the work that they were doing in the Eastern States 
and said that if a bare Hving were assured them they would go 
West, into the unknown Northern Pacific country, and carry the 
Book, and all that it stood for of love and devotion, to those In- 
dians. 

Five of these men were ministers. Four of them were Meth- 
odists, and their missionary society very gladly sent them upon 
their brave journey. They crossed the Rockies after many ad- 
ventures, and arrived under the escort of some traders of the 
Hudson Bay Company on the banks of the Willamette River, 
not far from which stream they established a mission. This 



THE TRAIL OF THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS 59 

mission grew and prospered, but the story of it does not belong 
to this tale. 

The other two men who had volunteered to go West to 
carry the Book to the Nez Perces were New Englanders. One 
of them was a young physician. His name was Marcus Whit- 
man. He had not been thought a very strong boy; people doubted 
if he would ever be up to much physically. He had not been 
brilliant at his profession, nor did any one in the town in which 
he lived regard him as a remarkable young chap. When the 
call of the Nez Perces sounded in his heart something told him 
that if he dared to refuse it he would miss his greatest chance of 
serving God in the world; but he was dreadfully tempted to refuse, 
none the less. Yet no one would have been the wiser if he had re- 
fused, and no one would have blamed him. He had every reason to 
wish to stay at home, for he was in love with a young girl who loved 
him. In those days to take a woman to live where he should have 
to live, would be to subject her to untold, and perhaps fatal hard- 
ships. He made up his mind that unless he could give her a 
decent home out there in the unknown region beyond the Rock- 
ies he would not ask her to go. From what he could learn from 
the hunters and naturalists and traders who had gone to the base 
of the Great Divide, an attempt to carry household furniture, 
or any goods which could not be tied to the backs of mules, across 
those terrible mountains would prove a failure. However, Mar- 
cus Whitman resolved to go and see for himself. 

In 1835 he and his fellow-missionary set out to explore. 
They were sent by the American Board of Foreign Missions and 
the funds came from the Presbyterians and the Congregational- 
ists of the East. This journey, which was to mean so much for 
the United States, was paid for by a missionary society. Always 
remember that! 

Young Whitman and his companion Parker crossed the 
Rockies at South Pass. They found that plenty of men had 



6o FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

crossed that way before them; hunters, traders, Indians, but 
no white woman and no wagon. Whitman squared his jaw and 
said that, though it had not been done, it could be done, and he 
returned to New England and told the girl he loved that he could 
take her and her household possessions across that Great Divide. 
That was enough for her. Had she not been praying all those 
months that he had been gone from her, that he would "find a 
way?" Could she hesitate now, when her prayers were answered? 
They were married, and they said their long goodbyes and set 
out. 

The men of the Mission Board were much pleased with the 
pluck and determination of young Whitman. He had reported 
Parker as already established on the lands of the tribe near Walla 
Walla, and awaiting his arrival; the Board determined to send 
another missionary and his wife to accompany the Whitmans, 
and to re-enforce the new mission; their name was Spalding. 

In those days all immigrant parties to the West began the 
journey into the wilderness at St. Louis. They generally went 
by boat up the Missouri as far as what is now Council Bluffs, 
and from that point travelled by horseback or by wagon by the 
Wilderness Trail. This trail was a pretty easy one as far as 
the Hudson Bay Fort, Laramie, on the Platte River. That is, if 
you were not massacred by Indians or stampeded by vast buffalo 
herds, or upset and swamped crossing the quicksands of the 
rivers, or did not miss the way over prairies, you found it com- 
paratively easy. It was like a highroad compared to what lay 
beyond Fort Laramie, that is certain! 

At Fort Laramie Whitman's party were allowed inside the 
Company's fortified enclosure, and the two white women were 
much stared at by the squaws and the children herded there. 
The Hudson Bay agents shook their heads at the sight of Whit- 
man's wagon. He could never get it across, they said. '^Such 
a thing had never been attempted," they added sullenly. But 



THE TRAIL OF THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS 6l 

Whitman had begun to suspect that something lay back of this 
persistent discouragement and sullen disapproval of theirs. 
Besides he had crossed that South Pass, and he knew! So the 
heavy, springless wagon with its canvas top and its four sturdy 
mules set out. But neither the mules nor the wagon's well- 
built wheels would ever have got it up and down those gulches 
and across that rocky way, or over those sheer ascents, if Mar- 
cus Whitman had flinched in his determination for a single foot 
of that terrible way. Over the Rockies he guided it, and down 
on the other side, across the hills and mountains and rivers and 
valleys to the Columbia River itself, and with it, and often in 
it, went the two plucky women, Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spald- 
ing. 

To the chiefs of the Nez Perces who came down the valleys 
in great state to escort the long-desired Messengers with the 
Book, the wonder of that journey of the Pale Faces who had 
dared to bring their "house on wheels" and their women, in- 
creased a hundredfold. Not far from Walla Walla they found 
suitable sites for two missions, and in 1837 they were planting 
their gardens, building their schools and churches and log dwell- 
ing houses. 

So far, so good! But they had learned a good many things 
on that trip, things over which Whitman squared his jaw more 
than once. Something was wrong up there in that Northwest! 
And it was not the Indian hostility, for the Indians were very 
friendly and almost too eager for the white man's knowledge. 
It was not the country, for it was the richest farming country 
Whitman had ever seen. It was not the rivers, nor the streams, 
nor the forests, nor the mountains; for the rivers were alive with 
fish and were navigable, the forests were immensely valuable, 
while the mountians were rich in minerals. No, it was not the 
country that was wrong, — that was all that man could desire! 
It was the strange spirit of enmity, — unspoken, intangible, yet 



62 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

always there, always working, always barring the way, — that 
Whitman and Spalding and Parker, and every man not employed 
by the Hudson Bay Company who penetrated to that delectable 
country, met sooner or later. 

Warnings from more than one traveller came to the mis- 
sionaries, to have a care how they ran counter to the wishes of 
the great white man's company, which ruled that land and its 
inhabitants for its own interests. One of the warnings was more 
explicit than the rest, and came from a man who had every rea- 
son for knowing the truth. He was an American, a naturalist, 
Townsend by name, who had spent two years in the Northwest and 
had travelled much with the hunters in the service of the Enghsh 
Fur Company. ''The Company will be glad to have you come 
and settle here," he told them, "for they need physicians and 
they need teachers for the half-breed wives and children of the 
Company agents. But as for the Indians whom you have come 
to teach, they do not want them any more enhghtened; the 
Company might then lose control of them. Should the agents 
find that you continue in your resolve to make friends with the 
Indians and to teach them, one of two things will happen; they 
will either refuse to sell you goods from the Company stores and so 
starve you out in time, or else they will turn the Indians against 
you and you will perish among them." 

The missionaries had an opportunity to find that this man 
spoke the exact truth. But much was to happen before that. 

In everything that they tried to do, from building their houses 
fo sending East for materials, seeds, utensils, stock, etc., they 
tound themselves against a blank wall. No man went or came 
into that land save by the Fur Company's express permission. 
The forts were so placed along the trails and the rivers as to com- 
mand them. They were the only safe places from the roving 
bands of Indians, — the rough, uncouth inns of that dangerous 
land, but woe to the traveller against whom those strange 



THE TRAIL OF THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS 63 

landlords closed their doors, or to whom the door was opened 
treacherously! Yes, it was quite plain that the Hudson Bay 
Company, for reasons of its own, guarded the exits and the en- 
trances to the land with jealous care! Before very long Marcus 
Whitman realized what lay behind this jealousy. 

The business of this Enghsh Company since 1670, when King 
Charles II had granted it a charter, had been to make money in fur. 
It had spread its trading posts from Quebec to the Pacific, and em- 
ployed many men, — Indians, half-breeds and French Canadians. 
It was run by a board of directors in London. Its aim was to 
monopolize the fur trade of America, and in the century and a 
half of its hfe it had nearly succeeded. The directors in London 
and the stockholders whom they represented made huge profits 
in money, the Company agents who traded with the half- 
breed post employees made large profits in stores, arms, and 
provisions, which they traded for furs at the Company forts, 
and lastly the Indians, who brought the furs to the forts and 
trading posts to barter for the things the white men had which 
they craved, — beads and cloth and rations, — also made a profit 
that compensated them, at least in their own eyes. That it was 
a poor and unfair compensation for the peril and hardship which 
they had endured to procure the skins, they were quite too ig- 
norant to know. 

Therefore you see, as Marcus Whitman saw, why it was to 
the interest of the Company to keep the Indians ignorant of the 
things white men knew. You will see too why any attempt 
on the part of the missionaries to cultivate the wonderful soil 
of Oregon, or to teach the Indians to cultivate it, was met with 
disfavor. If the Indians learned to raise their own crops they 
would grow independent of the Company and do its bidding 
with less readiness, and if the Americans of the United States 
knew what a wonderful farming country this was that they had 
bought from France, and which they now held so lightly and 



64 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

indifferently, it would mean immigration of farmers and home- 
steaders to the Northwest, and an end of the vast, uncleared, 
uncultivated, uninhabited lands from which the Enghsh Fur 
Company got its huge and easy gains. 

The question of boundaries was at this time in process of 
settlement between the United States and Great Britain. Neither 
country at large knew or cared much for what lay south of Van- 
couver; the great British Fur Company therefore had things pretty 
much in its own hands. One cannot blame it for thinking only of its 
own interests. It was ''good business" to keep the Indians in 
a wild state. It was "good business" to pay them almost nothing 
for what they risked their lives to get. It was "good business" 
to make the people of the United States believe Oregon and 
Washington and the border States were barren, unprofitable land 
with impassable mountains and unnavigable rivers and treacherous 
Indians. It was "good business" for the agents holding such forts 
as Laramie to turn the white-topped prairie schooners down to the 
Santa Fe or along the Southwest trails towards Cahfornia. What 
if the United States Government had bought the Louis- 
iana claim from France, and the Northwest with it! What if 
Lewis and Clark had made their surveys and their maps, and had 
discovered the rivers! The men who held the Indians held the 
land, and the men who held the forts held the Indians! 

It was plain to the missionaries that at any cost, even that 
of honesty and honor, the Englishmen of the Hudson Bay Company 
meant to hold the Indians. But Marcus Whitman and his fellow 
Americans resolved that they would neither be scared out of that 
country nor starved out of it. Two other tribes besides the Nez 
Perces, the Cayuses and the Spokanes, showed the greatest eagerness 
to come to the white man's schools and to learn the words of the 
Great Book. In the next four years many Indians turned from 
their hunting to farming. Whitman sent East for more helpers, 
and the Board of Missions added four more men to the mission, 



THE TRAIL OF THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS 65 

with their wives. This made a small colony of United States 
citizens in the very heart of Oregon. By 1842 they had about 
them, as near neighbors in their three mission stations, three 
hundred and twenty-two Indian families, who were actually 
living on their farms, and whose children were in the mission 
schools. These people had so learned the white man's wisdom as to 
depend no longer on the stores of the Hudson Bay Company for 
their daily bread. 

The faUing off of the Company's enormous profits in that 
region reached the knowledge of the London directors. It was 
the business of these gentlemen to see that the shareholders of 
the vast enterprise got their money; that was why they held their 
great positions of trust. The word was passed down the line 
from directors to agents, from agents to the half-breed factors 
who ruled the Company posts, that this religion and this education 
must not be allowed if they interfered with ''good business." 

The London directors did not quite put the matter so baldly. 
What they said to their agents in Canada was: "Cannot you 
give these Indians a religion, if they want it, that won't interfere 
with the Company profits?" And what they said to the Ca- 
nadian Governor was: "Cannot we have a few more British sub- 
jects pushed down there into Oregon while this boundary ques- 
tion is being settled, so that we can claim a majority of white 
settlers?" They did not desire white immigrants for permanent 
settlers and they cared nothing for what should become of them 
later. They were to be got rid of promptly after the land had 
become part of the British possessions; but that fact was not 
mentioned to the Governor, nor to the Scotch and Irish and Eng- 
ghsh settlers which the Government was at that time importing, 
almost free of cost, into British America, for colonization purposes. 

To both their requests the London directors of the Hudson 
Bay Company got singularly prompt answers. The French 
Canadian agents looked about them for men who would serve 



66 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

the Company's interest, and give the Indians religion without 
education. They found a few Jesuit priests who were eager for 
the opportunity. These men beheved that they were serving 
their Church and their Order by the work that they set them- 
selves to do. Not only did they use their position in the Company 
forts to bring the Indians into the Roman Church by baptism, 
but they set themselves with equal vigor to undermine the work 
of the American missionaries. To do this they used the danger- 
ous weapon of evil-speaking, and false-witness bearing against 
their neighbors. They would probably have argued that much 
that they taught the Indians to believe against the Yankee mis- 
sionaries they themselves also beheved to be true, and that in 
order to bring to an end the missions of the heretics any means 
was justified. It is hard to say what lay back of the methods 
they used, but the results which they unwittingly brought upon 
the Company they served, and the Order to which they belonged, 
and the Church they had meant to uphold, were far more dis- 
astrous than the worst enemy of the Company, or the Order, or 
the Church could have devised. But that you will see for your- 
self before this story ends. 

While these new plans of the Hudson Bay Company were 
pending, Marcus Whitman went upon his doctor's rounds, ad- 
ministered his mission affairs, making his reports to the Board 
at home, writing to the farmers he knew vivid letters telling of 
the wonderful opportunities of that wonderful country, and, in 
spite of opposition and unfriendliness on the part of the Hudson 
Bay officials, he continued to teach the Indians how to five by 
the sweat of their brows and to obey the laws of God. 

Although he and his fellow missionaries had had to bear 
actual affronts from some of the Company agents, and had been 
subjected to actual loss by acts of tyranny and dishonesty from 
some of the Company Indians, as a physician he never refused 
a call for his services even from an open enemy. Hence it came 




mt^ 



Bandon IjKAcii, Orkgon. 



THE TRAIL OF THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS 67 

about that he happened to be at the Hudson Bay Company Fort 
at Walla Walla one day in September, 1842, visiting a patient, 
when dispatches were brought to the officials which were of grave 
moment, not only to the Company, but to the United States. 
The dispatches came while the big meal of the day was being 
served in the official quarters, and as there were present on a 
tour of inspection a number of important men of the Company, 
as well as some Jesuit priests who were in the Company's employ, 
the news which the dispatch contained was rather more freely 
commented upon than might usually have been the case. Per- 
haps the majority of those present did not know that the silent 
man down at the far end of the table was a citizen of the United 
States. At all events the fact that a large colony of Scotch and 
English immigrants which had been sent by Sir George Simp- 
son, the Governor, had got across the mountains and were to 
winter at Fort Colville, three hundred and fifty miles up the 
Columbia, preparatory to entering Oregon in the early summer, 
was hailed with such joy by most of those present that the silent 
American pricked up his ears for what might follow. 

Suddenly a young priest sprang from his seat and gave a 
toast: "Hurrah for Oregon! America is too late! We have 
got the country!" he cried. 



An hour later the American doctor, whose departure from 
the fort no one had much heeded, was galloping down the trail 
to Waiilatpu, his mission station. He knew now, past a doubt, 
what all the sullen opposition, the barriers to progress, and the 
lies to travellers meant. A big steal was in the last stages of 
successful completion and he and a few American fellow-mis- 
sionaries and some two hundred settlers were all that stood in 
that Northwest against the triumph of this '^good business!" 

Help was three thousand miles away; winter with its terri- 



68 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

ble blizzards, the wilderness with its implacable Indians, the 
desert with its awful thirsts, barred the way. The horse galloped 
on and on and the man in the saddle stared grimly ahead as mile 
after mile was covered. Could he do it? There was only one 
chance in twenty that he would win out. Should he take that 
chance. There was his wife! Ought he to risk never returning 
to her? There was his work! Should he leave it unfinished? 
But there was a great wrong being done to his country which he 
could right. Should he right it? 

Before dismounting from his horse, he told his great de- 
cision to the little group of men gathered about the door of his 
home. ^'I am going to cross the Rocky Mountains and reach 
Washington this winter, God carrying me through," he said. 
"And I shall bring out an immigration over the mountains next 
spring, or this country is lost!" 

Then he got off his horse and went to his wife. It was she 
who helped him make his preparations for that journey of six 
months. In less than twenty-four hours she had him ready. 
After their first surprise the other men at the station were vehe- 
ment in begging him not to take so terrible a risk as a journey 
East at that time of the year involved, but his mind once made 
up, Marcus Whitman was not to be moved by talk of risks. In 
the end, one of the men, Lovejoy, went with him part of the way. 

They took a circuitous route to the South, over the Santa 
F^ trail from Taos, and then down to Bent's Fort on the Arkansas 
River. By this they avoided being snowed under completely 
in the Northern trail, but they suffered horribly from the winter 
storms of December along the Upper Santa F6 trail and in the 
mountains of Colorado. More than once they were lost and 
on the point of freezing to death, more than once they were nearly 
starved, and twice they crossed rivers covered with tons of float- 
ing ice that swept their horses down roaring currents. What 
saved them was Marcus Whitman's determination to fight for 




Marcus \\ hi iaiax 



THE TRAIL OF THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS 69 

life to the last gasp and to get on. At Bent's Fort Lovejoy had 
to fall behind; he was worn out and broken by the cold. Whit- 
man pushed on to St. Louis alone. 

His arrival caused a great stir. To have come from Bent's Fort 
at that time of the year was an unusual feat, but to have ridden 
down from the Columbia River and to have crossed the Rockies 
was an unparalleled journey. People stared at him, questioned 
him and came by the dozens to consult him. They found a 
square, stocky man with broad shoulders and a large head set 
on a thick bull neck. He had not shaved for four months, and 
his keen eyes looked out from a thickly-bearded face. The 
hair on his head was iron gray. His clothes were fur or buckskin, 
his buffalo coat with its hooded cape was wrapped behind him 
on his saddle as he rode, and he wore huge boot moccasins that 
quite filled his big Mexican stirrups. His entire dress on the 
street, one who saw him relates, did not show one square inch 
of woven fabric. 

His manner was abrupt, a little stern and brusque. '^Yes, 
Oregon was a wonderful country. The soil would yield im-.. 
mense crops. How did he know? He had farmed land there 
and had proved it." 

"Yes, the trail was possible for wagons and for women. How 
did he know? He had tried it." 

"Yes, the Rockies and the mountains and rivers beyond 
the Rockies were passable. How did he know? j^He had crossed 
them." 

"Would he guarantee a good country for immigrants out 
there? Yes, he would; and he would do more than that: he would 
lead any who cared to try their fortunes in the finest country 
the United States possessed, along the Oregon trail from Laramie 
to the Columbia in the coming spring." 

Meanwhile he in turn asked questions. He was impatient 
for the answers and would not be drawn into stories of Indians 



70 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

or of hunting or of fur traders and trappers. Was there a treaty 
pending between the United States and Great Britain? Yes, the 
Ashburton treaty. Did it cover the Northwest? Not the entire 
Northwest, only the section of the Great Lakes. Then where, and 
what, and whose, did it leave Oregon?" 

To this last there were confused answers. It seemed that 
no one well knew what was in the mind of the President about 
Oregon. Congress was to adjourn on March 4th that year. 
Many things might happen. Marcus Whitman did not wait 
for them to happen, but leaving the immigration plans in the 
hands of others in St. Louis he hurried on to the Capital. 

There has been much questioning and contradicting as to 
what was transacted between Whitman and the President and 
the Secretary of State during that March of 1843. President 
Tyler and Daniel Webster listened to his statements with grave 
interest. Whether or not they at this time formed any fixed 
decision as to the boundaries which the United States would 
claim from England in the Northwest, there is still some doubt. 
Webster had said earlier in one of his writings on the subject: 
''The government of the United States has never offered any 
line south of 49 degrees with the navigation of the Columbia, 
and it never will." 

However much Marcus Whitman may have influenced the 
President and the Committee on Foreign Affairs to abide by 
that stand, or however little, he was the last man to stop and 
wait for recognition on the subject. From Washington he hur- 
ried on to Boston to urge the Board to send more missionaries, 
more supplies and more money. Then he hurried West to meet 
his emigrants. 

Hurry as he would, however, it was the 20th of May before 
he caught up with them on the Platte River. He was none too 
soon. Many a prairie schooner and its mules would have got 
hopelessly tangled in that sandy bottomless river but for him. 




ABi 



The West 



THE TRAIL OF THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS Jl 

''Those who saw him for three days crossing and re-crossing the 
wide stream, swimming his horse to find the best ford, and at 
last heard him order the one hundred or more canvas-topped 
wagons to be chained together, four mules or four horses to each 
wagon and, driven in one long line, to ford for two miles that river 
swollen by spring floods, cheering the drivers, permitting not 
an instant's halt, encouraging the women and bellowing at the 
mules lest they sink in the quicksands, will never forget the man 
nor his deed." So wrote one who was a pioneer on the Oregon 
Trail that fateful year of '43. 

At Fort Hall, beyond the South Pass, the guides and scouts 
of the Hudson Bay Company almost induced the emigrants 
to turn south along the California trail to Sacremento — almost, 
but not quite! 'Trust me," urged Marcus Whitman, 'T know 
it can be done! Trust me and by early fall you will be in Oregon." 
Word came by his Indian friends that he was needed at his mis- 
sion. Some one was ill, and it was fife or death, He put his 
emigrants in charge of a Cayuse chief, whom he had healed and 
converted, and whom he trusted implicitly. The Indian's name 
was Isticus, and he was splendidly faithful to his great trust. 
Under his guidance the party consisting of eight hundred and 
seventy-five men, women and children, some two hundred wagons, 
and thirteen hundred head of cattle, reached Dallas, Oregon, in 
September, 1843, and the Northwest was saved to the United 
States. 

The end for Whitman, the revenge of the Company, and the 
terrible results of "good business" upon savage and undisciplined 
minds, came five years later. The one who suffered least was 
Whitman himself, for by it he went to his reward in a Far Coun- 
try beyond the Great Divide. This was the manner of his going. 

'Tt came about through the request of two Walla Walla 
chiefs that the Doctor should visit the sick in their villages. The 



72 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

people had been attacked with a violent form of measles, and 
many had died. Those that died who had taken the medicine 
of the Americans were said by some of the Hudson Bay Company 
men to have perished by poisoning. 'The Americans wish your 
lands!' said they. Sometimes it was told to the Indians that 
the white men of the Mission only waited until they got more 
white men, and then they would destroy the tribes and drive 
them out. 

Sometimes Tilokaikt, the Chief of the Cayuses, believed this, 
sometimes he did not. At this time when his people were dying 
of measles and dysentery and when the medicine of the Ameri- 
cans did no good, and could not bring them to life, he believed 
that it was true. So he went to Father Brouillet, the priest of 
the Company, and asked him to come and live in Whitman's 
house and take his lands, saying 'I will send him away.' But 
this Father Brouillet refused to do. Instead he took the place 
offered by Young Chief at Umatilla. This did not please the 
Cayuse Chief. 

When the Doctor went through Umatilla to visit the sick 
of the two chiefs of the Walla Walla he called upon the priest 
at his new station; he also lodged one night with his friend Is- 
ticus. Then he crossed the river and prescribed for the sick. 
Then being anxious about those whom he had left suffering from 
the disease at his own mission he left for home. 

He arrived very early the next morning, November the 28th. 
On the afternoon of the next day, very suddenly, the mission w£is 
surrounded by Tilokaikt and his tribesmen; with them were 
Joseph Scanfield, a Canadian Frenchman, Joe Lewis, a Canadian 
Indian, and Nicholas, a half-breed. Marcus Whitman and his 
wife and eight others were massacred and terribly mutilated; 
one man was shot next day, one escaped but died of exposure, 
the men at the Fort refusing to shelter him; three children that 
were taken captive died, and eight days later two young men 



THE TRAIL OF THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS 73 

were killed who had worked at the mission. Fifteen persons in 
all were massacred, all of them Americans, all connected with 
Whitman's mission. 

Neither the Hudson Bay Company men nor the missionary 
priests suffered at the hands of the Indians, nor did they punish 
the Indians in their turn. The Company officials announounced 
themselves as taking no part one way or the other, except to re- 
deem the few women and children who were spared. The priest 
Brouillet was the first white man to visit the camp of Tilokaikt 
after the murder. He reached there on November 30th and 
remained all night, and baptized some of the children of the 
Cay uses. Next morning he visited the plundered mission, saw 
the mutilated bodies, asked that they be buried and departed. 
Meeting Spalding, whose mission lay some distance off and 
who was ignorant of what had happened, the priest warned him 
and advised him to escape while there was time. The poor man 
was terror-stricken as to what might have happened to his wife. 
But he found her protected by the faithful Nez Perces, safe and 
ignorant of what had happened. 

Marcus Whitman had faced death so often, and worse than 
death — failure, that this sudden last moment could not have 
found him unprepared or afraid. This time too there was to be 
no long parting from his plucky wife. They died together de- 
fending each other. 

Their fives had not been in vain for Oregon, ''or for their 
country," or for God! And who shall say what Oregon and the 
Northwest, which they helped to make, may yet mean to the 
world and to our country. 

But the forts of the Hudson Bay Company along the Co- 
lumbia River are gone. They could not stay the advance of the 
army of homesteaders or shut the gates to progress. And the 
Jesuit priests are gone from the Indian reserves. Their bap- 
tisms did not make Christians. Their absolution and pennances 



74 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

did not make saints out of sinners. Religion without education 
did not save the Indians, any more than education without re- 
ligion can help them. 

It is always well to remember that great truth once uttered 
by a missionary who had Hved — and learned: ''Devotion to be 
kept pure, needs ideas as well as feelings." 

When God makes history, in order to compass some far-reach- 
ing purpose He gives such simple, plain people chances to do 
great things! St. Paul once threw out a clue to this mystery, 
which the rulers of this world would do well never to forget in 
their measurement of men and things: "For God hath chosen the 
foolish things of this world to confound the wise : And God hath 
chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty, 
and base things of the world and things which are despised hath 
God chosen, yea, and the things that are not, to bring to naught 
the things that are; that no flesh should glory before God." 

Certainly you and I, little known and little regarded as we 
may be by those about us, need never let our obscurity or our 
unimportance be a bar to brave and noble service in His Name. 
Our part in this great opportunity called. Life, is to be ready! 
Just as Marcus Whitman was ready when his summons came. 

For whatever influence the visit which Whitman paid to 
Washington may or may not have had on the policy of the Gov- 
ernment a few years later in deciding the question of our North- 
west boundaries, it was he, more than any other man, who in- 
fluenced the people of the United States to take possession of 
their land beyond the Rockies. He opened the gate, he made 
possible the first civihzed home, and he led the first real immi- 
gration of nearly one thousand souls into Oregon. He and his 
fellow missionaries first proved for what the soil of that wonder- 
ful land was meant and he endured untold dangers to make 
the discovery known to his fellow countrymen. While he accom- 



THE TRAIL OF THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS 75 

plished all this, he worked night and day for the Indians, and in 
spite of threats and heavy penalties stood for the education and 
the civilization and the real conversion of those first owners of 
the Northwest. He also, quite Uterally, died for the Indians. 

The men who were punished for his murder were not as guilty 
as those who went unpunished. The Hudson Bay Company, and 
the few Jesuit priests in its employ cried: ''Not guilty!" over the 
broken bodies of the American missionaries, and for years the bit- 
terest controversy raged between Romanists and Protestants over 
the evidence upon which that plea was based. One thing became 
certain long before the controversy died out; neither the Roman 
Church nor the Order of Jesus had given or received a blessing in 
this last of their great missionary enterprises to our country. As 
for the Hudson Bay Company, it was proved before all the 
world of onlookers to have done one stroke of ''good business" 
too much! 

Such open punishments, such open shame in the face of the 
world is not the worst misfortune that can befall an organization. 
The Roman Church whose priests, on this occasion, by their ignor- 
ance, served it so ill must not be judged as therefore unfit to carry 
on the cause of missions. Who knows what yet may be in store 
for that great Missionary Society, which once led the world in devo- 
tion and courage and humility! 

Nor should we onlookers judge the pohcy of the Hudson Bay 
Company so harshly as to blind ourselves to the business methods 
which we as a nation stand for to-day before the world. The 
"good business" of that ancient company is very like our own 
"good business" in this year of 1911-12. 

Ask the missionaries how much our methods of making money 
in the world and at home help men to believe in Jesus Christ! 

Ask yourself if our great American trade motto: "Buy at the 
lowest and sell at the highest," can be made to fit in any sense 
with the law of God: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 



^6 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 



NOTES ON THE OREGON TRAIL 

What is No Man's Land is Every Man's Land. The first to come gets 
first choice, but the last to hold out is the real possessor. Three European 
nations claimed our Northwest: — Spain, by right of discovery; France, by 
right of exploration; England, by right of conquest. 

Spain, by 1820, had let go. Whatever claims she may have had fell to 
Mexico with California. 

Long before this, in 1804, France, had parted with her claim to the United 
States of America for a consideration of $15,000,000. Napolean and Thomas 
Jefferson made this bargain. Napoleon needed the money to arm France 
for an invasion of England; and he offered the Mississippi Valley and all 
the French towns from the lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, with the Northwest 
thrown in; that is, all the land north of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, and 
west of the Mississippi River comprised the purchase, — California and part 
of Utah and Nevada being excepted. It was a pretty good bargain I The 
amusing part of it was that at the time Congress grumbled a good deal about 
ratifying it. 

Soon after the appropriation was made for the purchase money, and before 
the French governors and ofiicials of New Orleans, St. Louis, and the other 
towns had all of them handed over their commands to the Americans, the 
President had dispatched two army officers. Captains Lewis and Clark, with 
a small escort and several guides to explore the land north of St. Joseph on 
the Missouri River in a westerly direction until they reached the Pacific. 

Very little was known about the Pacific coast north of California. The 
English had coasted along those western shores several times in the 16th, 
17th and 18th centuries and yet had faOed to find what remained to an Amer- 
ican to discover in 1792 — the mouth of the great Columbia River! Captain 
Gray of Boston, the discoverer, had planted the United States flag on the 
shores of the river, and even before the French purchase it was regarded as 
United States property. 

Lewis and Clarke were directed by the government to make, if possible, 
a junction with the Columbia River as near its source as was navigable, and 
follow it to the ocean. It was supposed at that time that this water route 
via the Missouri and the Columbia, was the only possible land way of reach- 
ing the Pacific coast, except by the Santa Fe and lower California route 
through Spanish and Mexican lands and across the deserts. The Rocky 



NOTES ON THE OREGON TRAIL 77 

Mountains, so long regarded as unsurmountable barriers, threatened to 
cleave the tide of immigration which the great West was soon to receive, 
into two widely separated streams. Indeed it is quite conceivable that if a 
wagon trail had been found an impossibihty over the Rockies there would 
have been no settlement of the Northwest from the United States; for the 
Lewis and Clark expedition proved that the journey up the Missouri, even 
for men used to hardships, was too dangerous and difficult to be undertaken 
lightly. And although the two officers reported a great country and wonder- 
ful rivers on the west side of the Great Divide it was looked upon as at best a 
region for hunters and trappers. 

Indeed neither the United States Government nor that of Great Britain 
were much more enlightened for a long time after this. Had they been so 
the question of boundaiies would not have remained unsettled so long after 
Lewis and Clark had returned from that now famous journey. The people 
who really did know, were the agents of the Hudson Bay Fur Company, and 
the French half-breeds whom the Company sent out to gain a hold over the 
Indians who wandered in savage hordes over the land, and upon whose child- 
ish ignorance the factors and agents traded to bring them in their largest 
gains. 

It was natural that they should regard any settlement of that great hunt- 
ing-ground by the citizens of another government as a calamity. An attempt 
on the part of John Jacob Astor, merchant, of the City of New York, to found 
a fur agency at the mouth of the Columbia at a settlement which he named 
Astoria, had given the Hudson Bay Company considerable trouble to suppress. 
In order that no other rivals should bother them the Company encouraged a 
kind of surly incivihty among the so-called bourgoise, or half-breed factors, 
who ruled the Company forts. This incivihty they were encouraged to show 
towards all traders or settlers. 

These forts extended down as far as the river Laramie in Colorado, and 
along the Columbia to Walla Walla in the west, and eastward to the Great 
Lakes. By the year 1846 the Company employed fifty-five officers and five- 
hundred and thirteen agents, had twenty-three forts with three great trading 
centres, and ran two large steamers along the Pacific coast from Mexico to 
Russian America. Their agents represented what little civilization there was 
from Fort Laramie to Sacramento City. 

It win be plain to any observer that no great secret about the value of 
the Northwest was hid from them. The wonder is that for twenty-five years 
after Lewis and Clark had made their surveys of this great purchase of the 
United States these English fur merchants should have kept the gateway to so 



78 FOLLOWERS OF THE TRAIL 

vast a possession closed, and that too by the simplest of all devices. They 
pointed with lack-lustre eyes at the great mountains a hundred miles away, 
rising snow-capped and terrible in the still air. "No thoroughfare!" said 
they with a shrug, and went about their affairs. And the wornout travel- 
lers, discouraged by the long journeys across endless prairies, and unfor- 
gettable deserts, remembering their escapes from turbulent rivers and treacher- 
ous quicksands, unnerved by the constant teasing depredations of the Indians, 
could only look at the distant Rockies rising sheer and awful across the path, 
and acquiesce. 

From Fort Laramie there was a well-worn trail down to Sarcamento in 
California, and another down through Colorado to the old Santa F6 trail 
which branched off to the southern route to California. It was along these 
trails that the Hudson Bay agents pointed their unwelcome guests for a whole 
generation. 

Looking back on the thing now it seems not unlike a huge game of chess 
played by unseen powers. What it would have meant to us as a nation and 
as a country to have lost the Northwest it is difficult to say; what it would 
have meant to England to possess it, it is also difficult to say. But that God 
in His wisdom meant it to be part of the United States is now singularly plain, 
for the change was brought about naturally, not by the designs of diplomats, 
not through the contending powers of two greedy nations, but rather in spite 
of the indifference of two nations and of their statesmen, without wars, and by 
the most unlooked-for means and the most unknown and unexpected agencies! 
A pawn, checkmating a king! A country doctor — "by faith removing moun- 
tains!" 

THE END. 




MAP OF THE F 




TRAILS K^fDiCATED TKl/5 ! 



^f^m^ 


Frenck. 


-e-O-t- 


Oregori. 


5 ♦ S 

N\fm 


Fortu-J^Jine'Td 
6antcL Pe. 
Mission. 



REAT TRAILS 



Cburcb fll>i60lon0 puWleblno Co., 

2U State Street, DartforD, Conn. 



ROUND ROBIN, PUBLISHED QUARTERLY 

SERIES FIRST 

The Mission Field 

1. INDIAN MISSIONS, Part I, by the Rev. Anthon T. Gesnbb. 

2. WESTERN MISSIONS, by the Rev. Anthon T. Gbsner. 
6. AFRICA, a compilation from various sources. 

9. INDIAN MISSIONS, Part II, by the Rev. Anthon T. Gesnbr. 

10. DIOCESAN MISSIONS, by the Rev. T. M. Peck and others. 

12. CHURCH SCHOOLS IN THE WEST, by the Rev. A. T. Gesnbr. 

14. INDIAN MISSIONS, Part IV, by the Rev. F. W. Crook. 

15. NASHOTAH HOUSE, by the Rt. Rev. W. W. Webb. 

,- ) A PEEP INTO HEATHEN TEMPLES IN CHINA, by the Rt. 
\L' > Rev. Sidnbt C. Partridge, Bishop of JKyoto. In two parts, 10 

) cents each. 
20. DAYS WITH THE RED MEN, by Mrs. J. D. Morrison. 

22. A SUMMER TRIP AMONG ALASKAN MISSIONS, by Bertha W. 

Sabine, Deaconess. 10 cents. 

23. AMONG THE SEMINOLES AND CHEYENNES, S. FLORIDA 

AND OKLAHOMA. 10 cents. 

24. ALASKA'S GREAT HIGHWAY, by Rev. J. W. Chapman. 10 cents. 

25. CHIPPAWAY PICTURES FROM THE TERRITORY OF MIN- 

NESOTA, 1857, by Rev. J. Lloyd Breck. 10 cents. 

26. RED AND WHITE FIELDS IN MINNESOTA IN 1858. by Rev. 

J. Llotd Breck and others. 10 cents. 

10 cents each. 12 numbers for $1.00 



seribs second 

Stories from the Mission Field 

1 AUNT SALLY, by Mrs. Buford, of Lawrenceville, Va. 

6. OPITCHI BIMISAY, by Miss Stbil Carter, Deaconess, 

7. IN THE EVERGLADES. 5 cents. 

8. A VISIT TO NGANKING, by the Bishop of Shanghai. 6 cents. 

11. ROSETTA, by Miss E. Wheeler. 5 cents. 

12. ONE OF OUR GIRLS, by Bishop Wells and Mrs. H. M. Bartlett 

5 cents. 

13. A HILL-TOP PARISH, by Samuel Hart, D. D. (For older Juniore.) 

14. JUANCITO, A Mexican Story, by Belle G. Merrtlbes. 6 cents. 
16. THE JOURNEYINGS OF A JUNIOR: or. What a Little Girl Saw 

in Far Japan, by K. S. F. (Special Number.) Price 20 eenti. 
18. NEBUCHADNEZZAR, by Miss Oaklet. Price 5 cents. 

21. AN OLD WORLD CHIME IN A NEW-WORLD FOREST, by Mias 

K. F. Jackson. Price 10 cents. 

22, 23. CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH IN MANY LANDS, by M»s 

K. F. Jackson. Price 20 cents. 
24. PIONEER LIFE, A SKETCH OF EARLY DAYS IN MINNESOTA 
Price 5 cents. 

26. THE CHURCH ON CHAPEL ISLAND, by Miss R M. RosB, 

cents. 

27. LITTLE WITNESSES FOR GOD IN OTHER LANDS. 10 aants. 

28. EARLY DAYS OF CHILDREN'S WORK FOR MISSIONS. 

10 cents. 



29. SUGGESTIONS FOR THE JUNIORS. 10 cents. 

30. CHRISTMAS BARREL, by Virginia C. Castlbmam, 10 eents. 

31. FAIRY DO AS YOU WOULD BE DONE BY. (Diocesan Missions.) 

32. A REINDEER JOURNEY AND OTHER SKETCHES, by Rbv. 

J. G. Cameron. 10 cents. _ 

33,34. PLAYS AND RECITATIONS FOR JQNIORS. 
35! A VISIT TO ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL, LAWRENCEVILLE, VA. 

10 cents. 
36. ST. AUGUSTINE'S SCHOOL, RALEIGH, N. C. 10 cents. 
37 CONCERNING BEGGARS AND THE TRADE SCHOOL AT 
ICHANG, CHINA, by Rev. D. T. Huntington. 10 cents. 

38. LITTLE BROTHERS OF THE LORD, by Rev. S. C. Huohson, 

O. H. C. Sewanee, Tenn. 10 cents. 

39. MORE SUGGESTIONS FOR JUNIORS. 15 cents. 

40. TALES FROM OKLAHOMA AND CHRISTMAS AT WHIRL- 

WIND MISSION. 

41. THE PLEA OF THE PENNIES. A Modern Mystery Play by 

Gretchen Green. 5 cents. 

42. NELLY AND GYPSY. Missionary Ponies of Oneida. 10 cents. 

SERIES THIRD 

Missions of the Church of England 

2 and 3. THE S. P. G. IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES, by the Rev. 

Joseph Hooper, Parts I and II. Price 10 cents each. 
4 and 6. CHURCH WORK IN NEW GUINEA. Parts I and II. lOcts. 

6. CHURCH WORK IN THE DIOCESE OF SHANTUNG, CHINA. 

10 cents. 

7. SOME FEATURES OF MEDICAL WORK IN CHINA. 10 cents. 



SOLDIER AND SERVANT SERIES 

Pioneers and Leaders of the Church in Great Britain and America 

1. JOHN KEBLE, by the Rev. Walker Gwtnne. 10 cents. 
la. BISHOP PATTESON, by Bishop R. W. B. Elliott. 5 cents. 

2. GEORGE KEITH, by the Rev. Joseph Hooper. 10 cents. 

3. ST. AIDAN, by Bishop Doane of Albany. 10 cents. 

4. ST. COLUMBA, by Bishop Nichols of California. 10 cents. 

6. DR. WILLAMCROSWELL.bytheREV. S. F. Hotchkin. 10 cents. 

6. RECOLLECTIONS OF BISHOP HOBART. by Bishop Coxe, 6 

cents. 
6a. ST. WULSTAN, by Katherine F.Jackson. 10 cents. 

7. ARCHBISHOP CRANMER AND THE PRAYER BOOK, by the 

Rev. Samuel Hart, Custodian of the Standard Prayer Book. 10 
cents. 

8. MARTYRS OF THE REFORMATION, by the Rev. Henrt Fer- 

guson, M. A. 10 cents. ^ ^ , ^ ^ ,/» 

9. DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON, by the Rev. G. D. Johnson, D. D. 10 

cents. 

10. BISHOP WHITE OF PENN., by the Rev. S. R. Colladat. 10c. 

11. BISHOP HEBER IN INDIA. 10 cents. 

12. BISHOP BERKELEY, by Edwin B. Woodruff. 10 cents. 

13. BISHOP AUER OF CAPE PALMAS^ by M. T. EMBkr. lOo. 

14 ST. ALB AN, by The Editor of "Cantica Sanctorum"; and ST. 

AUGUSTINE, by Katherine Frances Jackson. 10 cents. 
16. BISHOP FIELD OF NEWFOUNDLAND, by Julia C. Emert. 10 

16. BISHO'P PHILANDER CHASE, a sketch by his granddaughter. 

10 cents. 

17. ST. PATRICK, by the Rev. Walker Gwynne. 10 cents. 

18. PILKINGTON OF UGANDA, with map, compiled by C. B. B. 10c. 

19. EARLY MARTYRS OF JAPAN, by P. O. Yamagata. 10 cents. 

21. QUEEN BERTHA OF KENT, by Edith M. Chase. 10 cents. 

22. GENERAL GORDON, by the Rev. Henry W. Little. 10 cents. 

23. BIVOUACING IN THE BOLAN PASS, by the Rev. A. R. Mao- 

duff M. A., Dom. Chaplain of the late Lord Bishop of Lahore. 

24. DR. ARTHUR NEVE OF KASHMIR, by the Rev. A. R. Macduff. 

25. A NEW SIR LANCELOT, by Julia C. Emery. 10 cents. 

26 SOME PIONEER MISSIONARIES OF THE NINETEENTH 
CENTURY. 10 cents. 



27. BISHOP MAPLES, by Katherinb F. Jackbon. 10 ce°*^- ._ . ^ 
28 THE FIRST FOREIGN MISSIONARY OF THE AMERICAN 

CHURCH. 10 cents. , ^ „ ,n ♦ 

29. BISHOP CROWTHER, by Mhs. J. D. Morrison. 10 cents. 
31,32. MODERN CRUSADERS, by the Misses Jackson. Partslandii, 

33. ST. NINIAN, by Rev. James Gammack, LL. D., and St. FINNIAN 

by R. B. BucKHAM. 10 cents. . v ,« 

34. GOOD KING WENCESLAS (a Christmas pantomime). 10 cents. 
35 PIONEER WORKERS IN KIUKIANG CHINA 10 cents^^ 

36. BISHOPS OF THE AMERICAN CHURCH MISSIONS IN CHINA 

15 cents. 

37. ST. NOTBURGA. 10 cents. „ ^, , ^ 

38. THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE, An Easter Play, by Juliana 

CoNOVBR. 10 cents. 
89. SOME RECENT MARTYRS. ^ , ,. ,,. 

43. NOTES ON AFRICAN MISSIONS. To be used in connection with 

Anglican Church Missions in Africa. 10 cents. 

44. A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF AFRICA, by Sarah C. Woodward. 25 cts. 

45. THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. A Xmas Play for a Sunday bchool or 

Missionary Society Festival. 
$1.00 Subscribers will eacli receive a copy of 12 numbers, as issued. 



The Kingdom Growing. A series of 15 lessons on the Missions of the 
American Church, by the Rev. Lester Bradner. Jr., i^a. U. Zb 
cents. Extra Leaflet copies of the questions on the lessons. 10 cents. 

Twice Around the World, by Mrs. A. T. Twing. 250 pages and 100 illus- 
trations. Paper 25 cents, cloth 50 cents net. 

The Japan Mission of the American Church, by Rev. R. W. Andrews of 
Missionary District of Tokyo. 13 illustrations, 159 pages. Uotli 
75 cents, paper 50 cents. 

The Church's Mission to the Mountaineers of the South, by Archdea- 
cons of Va., West Va., Lexington and Asheville. and the Rev. 8. C. 
Hughson. O. H. C. of Sewanee, Tenn., compiled by the Rev. Walter 

Anglican Church Missions in Africa. 190 pp., 14 illustrations, 10 maps, 
tables and chronology for the use of students. Price 60 cents. 
Postage 8 cents. 

Questions on " Anglican Church Missions in Africa." Six Lessons. Scents. 

The Churchman's Supplement to the Upward Path. Part I. For Mission 
Study Classes, by Rev. Wm. E. Gardner, Secretary of the Ist Depart- 

°^1part II. For the Junior Auxiliary, by Miss LuCT C. Sturgis and 
Miss Grace Hutchins. 166 pp. 35 cents. 
Part II by itself, under the title 
"The Pickaninnies' Progress." 15 cents. 

This study Course was used at the Cambridge Summer Conference, 1910, 
and for two of the Mission Classes at Cincinnati, in October. 1910. 
The Conversion of Mormonism by George Townshend. 25 cents. 



The Missionary Leaflet, to" "lK'"u.f Triu'X; 

Schools and Missionary classes. Single number, post-paid. 3 cents. Spe- 
cial discounts on large orders. 
Series 1. The Missionary Chain in Both Primary and Junior Grades 

I. The Missionary Chain. 

II. What is Missionary Work? 

III. Founding of the Church in Our Land. 

lY. Growth of the Church in the United States. 

V. Our Indian Missions. 

VI. Our Missions to the Colored People. 



VII. Our Mission in Liberia. 

VIII. Our Mission in China. 

IX. Our Mission in Japan. 

X. Church Schools in the Mission Field. 

XI. Church Hospitals in the Mission Field. 

XII. City Missions. 

Thit set in pamphlet or leaflet 8 in twelve numbers of either grade. 15 

cent*. Ten or more »ete of the leaflets to one address, 10 cents each. 



SlIRIBB II. 



Junior Gradb. — The Missionary Districts. 
Revised Edition in preparation. 



lSbribb III. Junior Gradb. — Missions of the Church of England. 



1. Beginnings of Modern Missions. 11. 

2. Uganda. 12. 

3. Some Missions in Canada. 13. 

4. South Africa. 
6. Early Missions in India. 

6. India and Ceylon. 

7. New Zealand. 

8. Madagascar. 

9. Zanzibar and Likoma — Part 

I. 

10. Zanzibar and Likoma — Part 
IL 

The Set, one copy 



12. 
13. 
14. 
16. 
16. 
17. 
18. 
19. 
20. 



New South Wales— Part I, 
Norfolk Island. 
New South Wales— Part II, 
Sierra Leone. 
West Equatorial Africa. 
The West Indies— Part I, 
Mauritius. 

The West Indies— Part II. 
Corea. 

Singapore, Labuan and Sara- 
wak. 

each, 25 cents 



Braiil 3 cents. 



Sbribs IV. Junior Gradb. 



Introductory Series. Senior Grade. — The Conversion of the World. 

1. The Beginnings. 



Conversion of Europe. 
The Conversion of America. 



4. Conversion of Asia. Part I. 

Part II. 

Part in. 

" " Part IV. 

" •• Part V. 

Part I. 
Part II. 

Part III. 

" " Part IV. 

Conversion of Australasia. 



To the Revolution. 
The United States. 
Canada. 



Part I. 
Part II. 
Part III. 
Assyria. 
India. 
China. 
Japan. 

Corea, Formosa, the Philippines, 
Northern Africa. 
West Africa and Liberia. 
South Africa with Supplement 
East Equatorial Africa. 
Part I. Australia. 

Part II. New Zealand. 
** " " Part III. Melanesia. 

This Set, one copy each, in pamphlet 25 cents, in leaflet form 20 esntt. 



5. Conversion of Africa. 



6. 



Series V. — Heroes in the Mission Field. 

Biography, with numerous additional extracts from other authorities 
on the subject of the story and with maps, portraits and various il- 
lustrations in one envelope designed for mounting on cards or in 
blank-books. 16 cents each. 

So. 1. George Lawrence PilkingtonNo. 7. 
of Ugandi 



No. 2. John Selwvn of Melanesia. No. 8. 
No. 3. John Horden of Moosenee. 
No. 4. Chinese Gordon. No. 9. 

No. 6. The Lawrences of India. 
No. 6. John G. Paton of the New 
Hebrides. 



James Chalmers of New 
Guinea. 

Charles H. Brent, Bishop of 
the Philippines. 

George Selwyn of New Zea- 
land. 



The Pictubb Sbries. 

Teacher's Helps for the " Kingdom Growing " and for the " Missionary 
Chain," each in one envelope as in Series V above. 25 cents each. 

1. The Missionary Chain. 6. Missions in Alaska. Extra No. 

2. The Church in America. in 5 envelopes for the use of 

3. Indian Missions. the Interdiocesan Study 

4. Missions to the White Races in Course, 76 cents. See below, 

our Land. "Special Series." 

5. Miisioofl to the Colored People. 7. Missions in Porto Rico. 

8. Missions in Cuba. 

9. Missions in the Philippine*. 
10. Missions in Africa. 



Spbciai. Sbries. 

Six LesBona on Alaska recommended by the Diocesan OfiBcers' Meeting in 
Boston, October 11, 1904, for a United Study Course for the Auxiliary 
Branches for Lent, 1905. 6 cents. 

Five Helps for the Alaska Lessons. (Picture Series No. 6.) 15 cents each, 
the Set, 75 cents. 

NOTE: For material for lesson VI consult last 12 Nos. of Spirit of Missions 
and latest official Report. 

Six Lessons and five Helps on Alaska (Leader edition complete) in pam- 
phlet, 50 cents. 

Five Lessons — Some Strategic Points in the Home Field; being the Inter- 
diocesan Course, Lent, 1906. In three envelopes for general class use, 
or one pamphlet (Leader's edition), complete, 25 cents. Extra sets 
of Six Leaflets for Class use. Method B, 6 cents a dozen. Selected 
papers from the above for advanced class study (Method A), 
pamphlet, 15 cents. 

Six Lessons on Japan, topics only, with references. 5 cents. 

Six Lessons on China, in leaflets or bound in paper with supplementary ma- 
terial 35 cents. With Bishops of the Am. Mission and other publi- 
cations on this list bearing on Church work in China. $1.00. 

Three Lectures on Alaska 

The Eldorado of the North. 
In the Heart of the Alaskan Gold Field. 
Down the Yukon to the Arctic Circle. 
10 cents each. 25 cents for the three. 

A Portfolio of some 60 loose page prints of ALASKA and its Missions. 
75 cents. 

Three Indian Lectures 

I. Indian Neighbors in our Eastern States. 
II. Across the Plains with the Red Man. 
III. The Indians of the Rookies and the Pacific. 

10 cents each. 25 cents for the three. 
104 Prints to illustrate these Indian Lectures. $1.00. 

The above SIX LECTURES in one pamphlet under the general title 

Journeyings with our Missionaries through Alaska and the Indian 
Lands of the United States. Price 40 cents. 



Instruction Books for Sunday Schools 

by the late Mrs. Chas. H. Smith, being part of her legacy to the Publishing 

Company. 
The Church Catechism. Illustrated and Explained. Price 10 cents. 

136th thousand.l 
Christ in the Gospels and the Church. Beautifully bound. Price 25 cents. 
Christ in Type and Prophecy. For young children. Old Testament series. 

With Illustrations. Cloth back, paper boards. 173 pp. 15 cents. 
The Catechism of the Bible. For beginners. Old Testament Series. New 

Testament. Each 5 cents. 



Outlines of Church History. With Questions and Suggestions for Illus- 
tration. For the Use of Bible Classes. Bound in white cloth. 
Illuminated. 141 pp. Price 35 cents. 

Thoughts for Lent. 35 cents. 

Mrs. Smith's books can also be obtained from Edwin S. Gorham, Publisher, 
37 East 28th St., New York. 



Special reduction to Sunday Schools and Societies on wholesale orders. 

To save charge for collecting, kindlj/ make checques payable on Hartford, 
y«te York, Boeton or Philadelphia, or aend postal order t« 

MISS BDITH BEACH, Asst. Treas. 

211 Stat* Street, Hartford, Cona. 



^'fiJe';^ 



